How do you ensure that your Managed Services partner increases your innovative power? and not swallow it?

Blogs AI-ready cloud Lourens Siderius

26-8-2026

This article is automatically translated using Azure Cognitive Services, if you find mistakes, please get in touch

A fully customized IT environment: for years, that was the wish of almost every organization. We now see that one after the other comes back from this. That has a lot to do with the fast pace at which Microsoft releases new features (pretty much every week!). But also with the scarcity of experts. After all, in a customized environment, every new functionality takes research, hours and attention. Who does that work amount to? The people you need for your AI and data plans. As a result, those plans are being put on the back burner. And with that, your innovative power decreases very quickly.

A rotating environment that is actually stationary

Municipalities, consultancy firms, law firms, maritime service providers: I regularly sit around the table with parties from all kinds of sectors. What do they have in common? They have outsourced their environment to an IT partner for years and now see that it has remained passive. Everything is running properly. But co-innovating, that's not what we worked on. And if the organizations in question wanted something to happen, they had to sound the alarm themselves.

You may recognize the following example. You see that Microsoft is releasing a new feature and conclude that it can be very interesting for your organization. Your IT partner does not indicate anything and that is why you sound the alarm yourself. "Shouldn't we do something with this?" you ask. The IT partner then starts puzzling. You receive a proposal that comes with a hefty price tag, set things in motion... and a month later this process repeats itself.

In this way, innovation becomes a series of separate projects that you have to drive. The result: disappointment in the IT partner and strategic decline (because that is what stagnation means). That can be done differently.

What distinguishes an IT partner?

Roughly speaking, in three areas: innovation, customer satisfaction and price. Wortell is deliberately not in the low-cost arena, because our focus is on quality. That is why we consider the other two points, innovation and customer satisfaction, to be of paramount importance.

As a Managed Services Provider, we do not take any legacy with us and we use the principle that you can decide to switch to someone else every day. We are therefore fully committed to innovation. In our view, this should not be a series of separate projects that you request over and over again. Innovation is part of the service. You can see that, for example, in the switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11: we have carried out this for our customers within the service, without the need for a separate project.

We can do this because we work from a standardized workplace, Azure and network environment as a basis. This means that new functionality from Microsoft is automatically prepared for you. Is it a limitation that you go along with a standard that has not been specially designed for your organization? A few years ago, that may have been the case. But now you get a lot in return: your environment is 'innovation-ready' without you having to put someone on it.

In addition, we ask for each report whether you are satisfied with the way we have handled it. We also call once or twice a year to ask how you experience the collaboration. And periodically, a Worteller comes by to conduct an in-depth interview. With all the feedback we collect from your organization, we sharpen our services.

Ready to build a solid foundation?

You can expect a Managed Services Provider to be 'water from the tap': that is our vision. Because only then does added value for the business come into the picture. This allows your experts to focus on AI and data platform innovations that really help your organization move forward.

Curious about what building a secure, future-proof IT foundation looks like in practice? Read the Speyzer customer story. Want to know more about laying a solid foundation? Read more in 'How to build an AI ready Cloud: technical foundation plus transformation mindset'

Sparring about your IT foundation?

Do you want to know how to set up your IT environment in such a way that management takes up less capacity and creates more room for innovation? Please contact us. We are happy to think along with you about what is needed in your situation.

Our author

Lourens Siderius

Lourens Siderius is Director of Cloud & AI Platforms at Wortell. In this role, he helps organizations build an AI-enabled future in which cloud platforms are not only stable and secure, but also act as a catalyst for innovation and growth.

Lourens leads the evolution of Managed Services toward AI-driven and AI-enabled solutions, with security, compliance, and scalability as the foundation. Together with his teams, he develops platforms and services that relieve organizations of day-to-day operational complexity, while creating the space to actively apply AI within their core processes.

He strongly believes in partnership: working side by side with customers on a robust, standardized platform with clear guardrails, while keeping control firmly in the hands of the organization. Through initiatives such as Co-Managed services, AI Workplace, and the AI Service Center, Lourens supports customers in ensuring business continuity today while unlocking AI-driven opportunities for tomorrow.

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