From AI hype to revenue reality

Disruption from AI adoption, shifting commercial models and macroeconomic pressure will shape the overall market for professional services, including consulting, systems integration and managed services, in 2026. TBR clients have been asking: How fast and how significant will profitable revenue come from AI-related services and adjacent professional services? How will commercial models change? How much longer will time-and-materials and pyramid staffing models last? And what is the timing expectation for a return to double-digit growth based on our decades of data on these markets?
 
TBR’s focus has always been on individual companies. Understanding, and even predicting, market trends is only the starting point. Our analysis goes deeper into what trends, disruptions and opportunities mean for the 50-plus companies in TBR’s Professional Services coverage. Predictions help set the framework for thinking about the future, while company-specific analysis provides the context for every player in the consulting, IT services and technology ecosystem.
 
In the below TBR Insights Live session, Principal Analyst & Practice Manager Patrick Heffernan and TBR’s Professional Services team discuss which macro trends will shape demand for consulting and IT services over the next five years, how companies have positioned themselves for accelerated AI adoption, and which companies will outpace peers and why.
 

This TBR Insights Live session is available on demand on our YouTube channel. Visit this link to download the presentation’s slide deck.
 
If you’d like to further explore the data mentioned in this TBR Insights Live session, sign up for a free trial of TBR Insight Center™ today.
 
TBR Insights Live sessions are held typically on Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET and include a 15-minute Q&A session following the main presentation. Previous sessions can be viewed anytime on TBR’s Webinar Portal.

TBR Insights Live session: How PaaS revenue will outpace SaaS revenue among cloud software vendors, why SaaS incumbents will position SLMs as a foundational part of their AI strategies, and whether the question, “Will AI be the death of SaaS?” will remain relevant

TBR Insights Live session, TBR Telecom Principal Analyst Chris Antlitz shares an in-depth review of our 2026 Telecom Predictions special report, Telecom Industry Will Adapt to K-shaped Economy in 2026. This session examines what the K-shaped economy means for communication service provider (CSP) balance sheets, customer behavior and competitive strategy, and how scaled providers can adjust to protect growth and margins.

The future of managed services: Partner-led growth and the ongoing market disruption

Once dominated by global systems integrators (GSIs) and traditional outsourcers, the managed services market has seen rising competition over the past few years as cloud providers, infrastructure OEMs, VARs and specialized pure play managed services providers (MSPs) vie to deepen their engagements with customers and grow their recurring revenue bases.

In this TBR Insights Live session, TBR’s Principal Analyst Patrick Heffernan and Senior Analyst Ben Carbonneau deep dive into how a widening variety of industry groups are leveraging their unique strengths, expanding partnerships, and providing new offerings and pricing models to differentiate their value propositions and cement their share in the ever-growing managed services market. From traditional IT outsourcing to cybersecurity offerings and managed AI solutions, TBR market analysts discuss how these enterprise and SMB services continue to evolve.

In the session below on the future of managed services you’ll learn:

• How commercial models in the managed services market are evolving
• The emergence of multivendor collaboration: How GSIs, hyperscalers and pure play MSPs forge partnerships for scale and specialization
• TBR’s forward-looking expectations for the managed services market in terms of leaders, laggards and emerging disruptors

Excerpt from The Future of Managed Services: Partner-led Growth and the Ongoing Market Disruption

From capex to opex and outsourcing to outcomes

• The “as a Service” model proves lucrative
• The pandemic created accelerated public cloud migration.
• Managed services engagements present upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Consumption-based, outcome-based and KPI-based pricing models are growing in popularity.

Excerpt from TBR Insights Live “The Future of Managed Services: Partner-led Growth and the Ongoing Market Disruption”

Visit this link to download the presentation’s slide deck.

TBR Insights Live sessions are held typically on Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET and include a 15-minute Q&A session following the main presentation. Previous sessions can be viewed anytime on TBR’s Webinar Portal.

Commercial Model Alignment Begins to Trump Technology Integration

In this TBR Insights Live session Principal Analyst Boz Hristov and Senior Analyst Catie Merrill discuss AI and data sovereignty in technology partnerships and alliances. Additionally, TBR’s team examines how the intersection of regional regulations and emerging AI capabilities is reshaping partner ecosystems.

As governments and enterprises demand greater control over data, global systems integrators (GSIs) are increasingly relying on locally based employees to meet sovereignty requirements, ensure compliance and build trust. Boz and Catie explore how this shift is influencing partner strategies, resourcing models and AI deployment approaches across regions. They also dive into the commercial implications for technology vendors and GSIs, as aligning commercial models is becoming just as critical as technical integration.

The session below on alignment with GSIs includes:

• An exclusive look at our newly expanded regional breakdown of GSI headcount and revenue, part of TBR’s Cloud Ecosystem Report, and what the data reveals about hyperscaler practices in the Americas, EMEA and APAC
• A look at how European Union AI and data regulations are impacting staffing and training within GSI practices
• An overview of our new ServiceNow Ecosystem Report and its implications for partners and alliances
• Key insights from our Voice of the Partner research, including what’s next in AI ecosystem management and multiparty collaboration
• A discussion on the increasing importance of commercial model alignment over technology integration and how ServiceNow is moving into the core enterprise SaaS market among the likes of SAP, Salesforce, Workday, Adobe and others

Excerpt from AI & Data Sovereignty in Technology Partnerships and Alliances

Cloud and services vendors think similarly about multiparty alliances, creating opportunity to convince OEMs through engaging with common partners

“The complexity of the ecosystem … forced you then to think about a different model, which was called triparty … No one’s going to turn away revenue … However, the end of the day, the KPI that drove success was making sure that we were driving 3x to 4x services revenue.” — Global Alliance Leader, Cloud

Visit this link to download this session’s presentation deck here.

TBR Insights Live sessions are held typically on Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET and include a 15-minute Q&A session following the main presentation. Previous sessions can be viewed anytime on TBR’s Webinar Portal.