Monoliths are dead weight—92% failure rate on big infra bets, per the consultancies’ own slideware. The winners? Micro-solutions under $50k, glued by APIs, orchestrated on $200/month clusters, and supercharged by composable AI agents. This is the no-BS blueprint for enterprise CIOs, public-sector leaders, and SMB founders who want velocity, not vendor lock-in.

Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, EY: four logos, one business model—turn your $100k problem into a $10 million lifetime subscription. They need armies; you need outcomes. Small teams—5 to 15 people, $20k–$50k per sprint—now out-engineer, out-deploy, and out-innovate the giants using APIs, containers, and AI agents that compose like Lego. This is the playbook for any leader who’s tired of funding someone else’s yacht.

Big IT consultancies don’t sell solutions—they sell time. Every 200-page assessment, every “strategy alignment workshop,” every Gantt chart thicker than a phone book is engineered to keep armies of mid-level associates busy and partners’ bonuses fat. The brutal truth: a $1.2 million ERP overhaul is rarely 24× more valuable than a $50k micro-fix. It’s just 24× more hours. Smart leaders—whether running a Fortune 500 division, a city agency, or a 40-person manufacturer—now bypass the bloat with small, interoperable teams and AI agents that solve real problems in weeks, not decades.

Accenture, Deloitte, EY, PwC: 1.2 million employees, $250 billion in revenue, zero incentive to solve your problem under $1 million. Their payroll is a predator—every $40k micro-fix is a threat to utilization rates, partner bonuses, and the private-jet lease. Small teams kill the beast with $25k sprints, containerized stacks, and AI agents that compose faster than a partner can expense a steak. This is the red-pill for any leader who’s done bankrolling someone else’s empire.

Accenture, Deloitte, and the rest of the Big Four aren’t tech companies—they’re labor arbitrage machines with PowerPoint. Their overhead is a black hole: 40%+ of every dollar you pay funds glass palaces, private jets, and 22-year-old “analysts” who copy-paste from last year’s deck. A $50k problem can’t keep the lights on in Bangalore, so they repackage it as a $5 million “transformation.” Smart leaders—enterprise CIOs, city managers, SMB founders—now route around the fat with small, interoperable teams that ship in weeks and cost less than one partner’s quarterly bonus.

Big consultancies still hawk the same 12 tired myths—upfront planning saves money, integration must be monolithic, compliance demands a year of decks. All nonsense. Modern stacks, containerized micro-services, and single-purpose AI agents have nuked every excuse. This is the surgical takedown enterprise execs, public-sector CIOs, and SMB owners need to stop signing seven-figure checks for six-figure problems.