When enterprises need to find a new IT vendor or consultancy, their first stop is often the client portal of one of the tech industry’s major research firms. Those firms produce reports that can provide a picture of a prospective supplier’s capabilities and how it compares to rivals. This month, IT research heavyweight IDC gave clients a new high-tech way to consume its research. The firm launched an integration that makes it possible to access reports through an AWS service called Amazon Quick Research. We caught up with IDC executive Meredith Whalen to get a closer look at the integration. We also heard from Billy Boozer, the newly appointed CTO of Dualboot Partners, who briefed us on the consultancy’s AI-powered software modernization framework. 

Bringing market research into AWS environments. Two months ago, the cloud giant launched a service called Quick Suite that uses AI agents to automate business tasks. One of the tools in the suite, Quick Research, can generate research reports based on a company’s internal documents and information from the public web. It’s also capable of drawing on property information from third-party data providers. IDC says that it’s the first technology data provider to make its research available via Quick Research.

IDC’s reports help companies answer questions such as what factors they need to consider when buying a new piece of network equipment. The firm also produces a significant amount of market-level research data. It tracks server shipment volumes, PC demand and the size of the various other markets that make up the tech sector. According to IDC, the new Quick Research integration will make it easier for clients to navigate those datasets. 

“Quick Research, acting as a next-generation AI research agent, enables users to generate, synthesize, and analyze complex research across multiple data sources in a fraction of the time,” Meredith Whalen, the chief product, research and delivery officer at IDC, told Boardroom Insight. “The core benefit is seamless access—customers gain faster, more accurate, and more precise insights by pairing IDC’s analyst-validated data with agentic AI, all directly within their existing AWS workflows.”

One of the tasks that Quick Assistant can speed up is researching IT service providers. For example, a data center firm looking to set up a co-location facility in Paris could have the AI draw up a list of local IT consultancies that can help it with the task. IT consultancies, meanwhile, can also use IDC’s research for tasks such as evaluating competitors. 

“Existing IDC clients can access their full subscribed content through this collaboration, which includes our global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities,” Whalen explained. “Therefore, research on the IT consulting market would be accessible, provided it is part of the client’s existing IDC subscription.

Speeding up software modernization projects. Dualboot Partners is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based IT consultancy that assists companies with tasks such as setting up analytics environments and building LLM-powered applications. It can also help clients modernize their existing applications, for example by moving an on-premise database to the cloud. Dualboot’s engineers have created a framework called DB90 to speed up the latter task. DB90 includes AI tools, workflows and other assets that the firm says can shave months off software modernization engagements.

AI programming assistants such as Anthropic’s Claude Code also promise to speed up application upgrades. Billy Boozer, Dualboot’s newly appointed CTO, says that DB90 stands out in several ways. One of is main differentiators is a custom data processing engine called 3PO.

“Tools like Claude Code help developers write code faster, but they don’t give executives or delivery teams a clear, system-level understanding of what they’re working with,” Boozer told Boardroom Insight. “3PO pulls in source code, architecture, documents, and operational context, and DB90 uses that foundation to produce a factual, shared picture of the entire application. That clarity accelerates delivery, reduces risk, improves decision making, and eliminates rework.”

Boozer, a serial startup founder, is taking up the CTO post five months after joining Dualboot in the role of vice president. Going forward, he will be responsible for leading the firm’s technology strategy. He will also work to make DB90 a bigger part of the software projects Dualboot carries out for clients. “We’ve expanded DB90 across our delivery teams because it’s become the way we anchor every engagement — work that goes beyond modernization to include replatforming and new product development,” Boozer said. “Before we write a line of code, DB90 surfaces risks, dependencies, technical debt, and the architectural decisions that matter. It gives our engineers, strategists, and clients the same baseline reality.”

Elsewhere in consulting 

Making Salesforce environments more automated. Many IT service providers use the lessons they glean during client engagements to launch pre-packaged software products. The newest consultancy to join the fray is Atrium, a provider of Salesforce and Snowflake services. Last week, it launched an AI tool called Andi to ease the management of Salesforce environments. Atrium says that Andi significantly speeds up tasks such as adding new CRM data and checking the new data for accuracy issues.

NexusTek strengthens its cybersecurity offering. The Colorado-based firm competes in many different parts of the IT consulting market. It can help companies adopt business intelligence software, manage hybrid cloud environments and deploy AI. The newest addition to NexusTek’s solutions portfolio is a managed cybersecurity service called NexusTek AI Email Security. It promises to protect clients’ inboxes from phishing emails, malware-laden attachments and other threats. Despite the name, the offering is not focused solely on email security. NexusTek says that it can also block threats in collaboration tools such as OneDrive and Slack.

A former Grant Thornton executive joins DLA. James McGurn is now a managing director in DLA’s valuation practice, which helps clients determine what a company is worth. That kind of information comes handy in many situations. For example, a consultancy in the process of buying a rival needs to know that it won’t overpay for the deal. On the sell-side, executives need to avoid low acquisition offers. As managing director, McGurn will be responsible for overseeing client relationships, mentoring staff and growing DLA’s brand presence. 

Boardroom Insight deep dive: Designit is a Danish consultancy owned by Wipro, a major IT services provider that generated about $10.8 billion in revenue during its most recent fiscal year. Jakob Voldum, a design director at Designit, recently briefed us on one of the Wipro unit’s newest projects. It will help its parent company modernize the IT infrastructure of Odido, the largest mobile internet provider in the Netherlands. The multi-year project will place an emphasis on using AI to automate manual work.

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