Boston – – September 30, 2026 -- HFS Research has retired its flagship Horizons provider assessment and replaced it with HFS Services-as-SoftwareTM (SaS) Star Ratings, a scoring system built entirely on more than 400 enterprise client evaluations with zero vendor input and no analyst scoring.
The shift ends a model in which provider rankings were assembled from vendor briefings, RFI responses, and vendor-selected references before being scored by analysts. Under SaS Stars, providers cannot submit scoring inputs, buy inclusion, or select client references; only current enterprise clients who own or govern an engagement and have at least 12 months of experience with it are eligible to rate a provider.
Inaugural study covers 34 providers in Agentic Application Management Services
The first SaS Star Ratings report evaluates Agentic AMS delivery using more than 400 enterprise client verdicts across 34 providers. Roughly 54% of enterprise clients expect to increase AMS spending over the next 12 months, but only about 14% of engagements combine autonomous resolution, AIOps, and live-volume scale. Just 12% of engagements use outcome-based, gain-share, or risk-share pricing models.
Nine providers reach the Leaders tier, but none earns the top rating
Accenture, TCS, Infosys, Capgemini, Publicis Sapient, Cognizant, HCLTech, IBM, and Wipro make up the Leaders tier in the inaugural ratings. No provider received five stars. Challengers Hexaware and Genpact posted the highest scores on Outcome-Aligned Commercials, the tower rated lowest across every Leader-tier provider.
Each rating combines a capability score across five delivery towers — AI-first delivery, proprietary IP, investment velocity, outcome-aligned commercials, and production scalability — with a client advocacy metric measuring the share of clients who would actively recommend the provider. Scores are weighted by engagement scope, tenure, and deal size, and confidence-adjusted for thin or divided samples.
Enterprises bear automation risk while fixed-price models persist
Phil Fersht, Founder, CEO, and Chief Analyst of HFS Research, said enterprises are automating work while still paying for effort under fixed-price, capacity-based, and time-and-materials contracts, leaving clients carrying most of the automation risk. Enterprise clients ranked delivery consistency, commercials and pricing, continuity, and scale as bigger watch-outs than the underlying technology itself.
The rating platform includes an interactive dashboard that lets subscribed enterprise clients adjust the weighting of the five delivery towers and instantly re-rank all 34 providers according to their own priorities. Saurabh Gupta, President of HFS Research, said the tool is designed to let specialists and challengers earn visibility through delivery performance rather than marketing scale, unlike a static provider matrix.
The inaugural Agentic AMS edition of HFS SaS Star Ratings is available free of charge; future editions will be limited to HFS premium clients.