Systems integrators (SIs) have been integral to IT projects for decades, providing consulting services and helping enterprises build and launch technology tools.
Now, as organizations move to deploy agentic AI, top large language model (LLM) providers are looking to get in on that action. A proliferation of Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) services embeds AI experts directly into customer teams to help create, customize, and launch AI services.
For instance, this week, Microsoft launched a $2.5 billion venture, Microsoft Frontier Company, that the tech giant says “goes beyond” FDE, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced its own $1 billion investment into a new AWS FDE platform.
Both projects will integrate thousands of Microsoft and AWS engineers into customer environments to help them not only build AI tools, but learn essential skills to handle projects on their own going forward. Other big model players, including .
The gap between AI investment and ROI is growing, noted , CEO of Microsoft Commercial Business, explained in a builds for the long term,” she noted. Customers become “self-sufficient with AI,” moving from “observers to co-builders to autonomous operators” as they learn AI skills, workflows, and patterns that they can use to build AI going forward.
The platform is agentic-first and designed to compress timelines “from months to days,” and the derived business intelligence compounds to support future projects, Vasquez said.
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“Both Microsoft and Amazon are aggressively looking for ways to tighten customer lock-in and open up more opportunities to get inside both their clients’ operations and decision making apparatus,” he pointed out.
In addition, Randall said, Info-Tech’s research reveals that 77% of organizations do not have a corporate-wide AI strategy. FDEs will address this by being narrow and specific to the customer’s working AI systems, reference architecture, runbooks, and other deliverables.
SIs, however, provide a different service, he said. Their relevance will be in broader integration knowledge across systems, managing change, and scaling programs. “Their deliverables will be more strategic and broader in scope.”
Of course, there is overlap, he said, and Microsoft will work closely with global SI partners. The investment gap and implementation complexity put hyperscalers under pressure to “provide more white-glove services to pull their customers along.”
Considerations for enterprises
Levy noted that, for customers who have already decided on a particular AI stack, these platforms may be worthwhile as long as they’re comfortable taking a single-vendor route.
“Assuming Microsoft and Amazon are price- and service-competitive with systems integrators, they may represent a compelling alternative,” he said. Still, using their services could come at a cost of potentially reduced choice, which could limit longer-term options.
It remains to be seen whether these types of platform are better for the customer or the vendor, and deliver more value than existing alternatives, he said, but the market will ultimately decide.
With that in mind, he advised IT decision makers to deep-dive not only into Microsoft’s and Amazon’s agentic delivery competencies compared to those of SIs, but into whether their underlying motivations are “truly in the customers’ best interests.”
Info-Tech’s Randall also advised enterprises to consider the output they’re looking for. FDEs will fast-track accurate builds on specific platforms they specialize in, while SIs will then help make the platform work across an enterprise context.
FDE options are best for organizations looking past AI pilots to quick, effective product buildouts, he said. SIs are needed when those organizations need to scale that pattern across messy enterprise processes.
Another factor to consider: “FDEs are not suitable for organizations still working on basic AI strategy questions or that want to remain cloud neutral,” said Randall.
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