Managed IT services built for organisations outgrowing their GSI

A lot of managed IT is bought to replace an in-house team. Claranet built its IT Managed Services for a different situation: organisations that already work with a global systems integrator (GSI) and have found it no longer gives them the agility, the relationship, or the speed they need. In a market where AI is changing how quickly everyone is expected to move, those three things increasingly decide who keeps up and who is left behind.

The difficulty with the GSI model comes down to scale. When you are one account among many thousands, change requests tend to take months and pass through several layers of account management before anyone actually does the work. You rarely get to speak to the people who make the decisions, and delivery often sits a long way from your business, built around the provider's efficiency rather than your pace. In calmer times that was a frustration most organisations could live with. Now that AI is raising the tempo across the business, a partner that cannot keep up quietly holds you back.

What our service is, and why we run it this way?

We run your global IT as a managed service, at the scale you need, but with the agility and the closeness a GSI struggles to offer. We are big enough to deliver across your whole estate and every geography you operate in, and small enough that your organisation genuinely matters to us.

It also means you work with our leadership rather than a distant account desk. With our Pan-European Managed IT Services, Claranet executives stay directly involved for the life of the contract, with regular touch points built into the way the service runs, so that when you need a decision you are speaking to someone who can actually make it. That closeness is the real point of the service, and it is the thing most organisations tell us they had been missing.

Who this is for?

We built this for CIOs, IT directors, and heads of IT at organisations of a few hundred to several thousand users, usually working across several sites or countries, who are tied to a GSI that has grown too slow, too distant, or too expensive for what they now need. Often something has prompted the rethink: a contract coming up for renewal, an acquisition that has to be integrated, or a leadership team that has simply grown tired of waiting.

Our customers tend to work in sectors where both speed and risk carry a real cost, among them financial services, retail, housing, public sector and healthcare, construction and infrastructure, and manufacturing. Some run around 1,000 users on a single site, while others run a similar number spread across a dozen countries. In every case, IT has become too central to the business to leave with a partner that cannot move at the pace they need.

One service, delivered your way

You also choose how the service is delivered. Some organisations take it as a dedicated virtual team, a ring-fenced group of our people who work as an extension of your own function, badged to you, who take the time to learn your environment and get to know your people. You get your own team without the cost and delay of recruiting and holding on to that expertise yourself.

Others take it as part of our wider managed services, with the estate supported by our shared 24/7 service desk, security operations, and specialist teams. That gives you the outcomes and the efficiency of a managed service without having to run a team at all. Many customers settle on a mix of the two, and we adjust the balance as their needs change.

Why our size lets us move on your terms?

We have the scale you would expect from a Pan-European provider, with local teams in 11 countries, more than 300 certified cloud engineers, a 24/7 service desk and security operations centre, and the Microsoft, AWS, and cyber accreditations to back it all up. What we do not carry is the bureaucracy that tends to come with a GSI. Because we work through direct, local, and senior relationships, we can shape the operating model, the coverage, and the commercial terms around you rather than the other way round. In practice that might mean local-language support as standard, account management based in your region or centralised if you prefer, follow-the-sun cover across time zones, and your data held wherever your regulators require it. The service bends to the way you work, rather than asking you to bend to it.

Ready for a More Agile Managed IT Partner?

If your current GSI gives you the scale but not the speed, you do not have to accept that as the price of working with a large provider. We can give you both, with senior people who stay close to your account for the whole life of the contract. If that is the kind of partner you have been looking for, tell us what your estate needs, and we will show you how quickly a Pan-European Managed IT partner can actually move.