Are Software Vendors Taking a Bite Out of IT Services?: Software Snippets | Europe

Research evidence excerpt

Are Software Vendors Taking a Bite Out of IT Services?: Software Snippets | Europe

Foundation

July 5, 2026 03:00 PM GMT

Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc+MSoftware Snippets | Europe George W Webb

Equity Analyst

Are Software Vendors Taking a George.Webb@morganstanley.comMark Hyatt +44 20 7425-2686

Mark.Hyatt@morganstanley.com +44 20 7677-3663

Bite Out of IT Services? William Richards

Research Associate

William.Richards1@morganstanley.com +44 20 7425-0269

Important events in the world of Software & Services in the

Technology - Software & Services

week ahead, and key MS research / stories from the past week. Europe

Industry View In-Line

Key Takeaways

Big Tech’s $3.5bn AI deployment push (#Software, #IT Services)

Fewer flights, more tokens: SAP plans cost savings to fund AI push (#SAP)

IT Services: Still room for further downside (*MS Research*, #Tieto, #IT Services)

Buy versus build? Base44 launches its own LLM (#Software, #IONOS)

Cloudflare to rein in AI crawlers (#RELX, #Wolters Kluwer, #Informa)

1) Big Tech’s $3.5bn AI deployment push (#Software, #IT Services): Microsoft

(covered by Josh Baer) this week announced Microsoft Frontier Company "a new

operating business focused on delivering Frontier Transformation through AI".

Microsoft described the initiative as going beyond traditional Forward Deployed

Engineering (FDE), with a $2.5bn investment, 6,000 embedded experts, and support

from its SI partner ecosystem, including Capgemini. Separately, Amazon (covered by

Brian Nowak) announced a dedicated AWS FDE organisation, backed by $1bn, which

"focuses on business outcomes and leaves customers self-sufficient with AI". SAP

CEO Christian Klein has also spoken about creating FDE teams (reportedly starting

in July 2026).