Managed services represent a strategic model through which companies entrust the management of part or all of their IT department to a specialized external provider. This approach ensures business continuity, improves security, and optimizes internal resources, while reducing complexity and costs.
Basically, in other words, delegating a critical part of the business to a trusted IT provider. Hence allowing organization’s team more focus on strategical, core, initiatives whilst also stretching and advancing through tech.
In an IT market increasingly oriented toward the “standardization” of services, however, this model risks losing some of its distinctive value, transforming into an increasingly uniform offering. It is precisely in this context that SORINT has chosen to embark on a transformation journey, with the aim of putting quality, relationships, and in-depth customer knowledge back at the center.
We met with Flavio Patrizio Tassinari, Core IT Services Sircle Leader, and Nicola Gandolfi, Core IT Services Service Leader, to understand how managed services are evolving toward a new Customer Centric Delivery Model (CCDM) within the Core IT Services (CIS) hub, and what concrete changes this entails for teams and clients.
Core IT Services, at SORINT, encapsulate all “IT Managed Services”. Also known as outsourcing services.
Q: A question to better understand the scale of your business (division at SORINT): how many clients do you currently actively support?
Nicola Gandolfi: This is confidential data and we cannot share it. However, I can say that we have gained the trust of some of the most important global brands to co-manage their IT. This gives you an idea of the scope and responsibility of the work we do. The names, the exact numbers, however… remain top secret [laughs].
Q: Sure, of course. So let’s start with the basics: how would you define Managed Services today, and how do they differ from traditional support models?
Flavio Patrizio Tassinari: It’s essential to clarify the terminology to understand our value. Helpdesk and Service Desk are often confused. The Helpdesk provides non-technical support to the end user (think SIM assistance), while the Service Desk offers specialized technological support to those with existing IT skills. SORINT was born precisely in this context.
Today, our Managed Services represent the pinnacle of evolution: we manage application and infrastructure operations following ITIL best practices. We don’t just “resolve tickets,” but offer services that are precisely defined, regulated, governed, and measured. We offer comprehensive consulting, designed to generate concrete and measurable improvements for the client. We manage the entire technology lifecycle of prominent organizations, ensuring their IT remains efficient, reliable, and high-performance.
Q: “Outsourcing” is often discussed. What is SORINT’s position on this, and why do you prefer the concept of “co-sourcing”?
Flavio Patrizio Tassinari: The term “outsourcing” in Italy is often associated with full outsourcing, a model that involves the client divesting entire IT departments – a practice that today should be treated with caution.
Nicola Gandolfi: Exactly. We at SORINT instead adopt, always highly insist, a co-responsibility, or co-sourcing, approach, which is generally the model we recommend.
The difference is substantial: in full outsourcing, management is completely delegated to the provider; in our co-management model, the client retains access to the systems, and strategic governance decisions are made jointly. We become an operational arm that works in symbiosis with the client’s IT, which remains the primary recipient of our value.
Q: SORINT has moved from the traditional Service Desk to the NGMS (Next Generation Managed Services) model many years ago, and now to the CCDM (Customer Centric Delivery Model). Can you elaborate on these two terms and what were the stages of this evolution?
Flavio Patrizio Tassinari: In few words, Next Generation Managed Services model emerged somewhere between 2015 and 2017, I believe. A scheme that focused on shifting the B2B IT services from reactive troubleshooting to proactive business innovation.
SORINT began years ago with the traditional Service Desk based on the SPOC (Single Point of Contact) model. Although very cost-effective, this model was less effective in terms of quality, because ticket management was performed without in-depth knowledge of the client’s specific context.
For this reason, we moved to the NGMS (Next Generation Managed Services) model by introducing Sircles, our multi-technology organizational units that integrate specialized skills to synergistically cover different IT domains. NGMS teams manage customer clusters end-to-end, from the first to the second level, acquiring a deep understanding of the customer’s procedures and organizational chart. This approach has eliminated the so-called “context debt”: our engineers know, for example, that a seemingly low-priority ticket submitted by a customer must be handled urgently precisely because they understand the system context and the business impact.
Today we are in the next phase: the implementation of the Customer Centric Delivery Model (CCDM) within SORINT’s CIS (Core IT Services) hub. This evolution introduces greater focus on strategic value and strategic planning in service management.
Q: Perfect, let’s go deeper into the new model: what do the CIS and CCDM represent, and how are they changing the way you deliver managed services?
Flavio Patrizio Tassinari: The CIS (Core IT Services) represents a true Department born from the union of execution and NGMS. Today, it constitutes the perimeter that manages Infrastructure Operations: operating systems, virtualization, cloud, Kubernetes, storage, and databases, the technological foundation upon which most customers’ IT services are based.
Within this context, our new CCDM (Customer Centric Delivery Model) fits in, the operating model that governs the evolution of managed services. Its objective is clear: to balance the typical effectiveness of dedicated staff models with the efficiency of shared models, offering a more advanced alternative to overly industrialized contexts that risk generating a loss of quality.
CCDM also introduces a more structured approach to time and resource management. Professionals can operate as “Fully Dedicated,” when they work 100% on a single client, or as “Dedicated,” when a significant portion of their time (at least 30–40%) is permanently allocated to a specific client. The remaining time is not wasted, but reinvested in continuous improvement, automation, training, scripting, or supporting other clients in the same context.
In this new model, operational units are also evolving: traditional Sircles (SORINT’s departments) are transforming into PoDs (Points of Delivery), a term inspired by the logic of Kubernetes containers, which represent the minimum delivery unit and become the operational level on which CCDM is concretely applied.
Q: In the IT services market, price is often a determining factor. In this context, why should a customer consider the SORINT model and CCDM over other alternatives?
Nicola Gandolfi: Value. Quality. Governance.
Today, operations are increasingly perceived as a “commodity,” and in many cases, there is a tendency to focus exclusively on savings, sacrificing expertise and service quality. CCDM is our way of saying to customers: “Let’s improve efficiency together.” We’re not talking about linear cuts that risk compromising quality, but rather sustainable cost reductions, built in a shared and informed manner.
AI also plays a role in this scenario, progressively transforming the scope of operational activities: many redundant or repetitive tasks are being automated, allowing companies to free up resources and focus on activities with greater added value. Delivering more and offering more and doing more.
The objective therefore becomes clear: to shift the focus from pure operational oversight to a more strategic role for IT, where people can dedicate themselves to projects and decisions with a higher impact on the business.
Flavio Patrizio Tassinari: Exactly. We’ve seen cases where, in highly price-driven environments, some players have struggled to maintain an adequate level of service over time. SORINT doesn’t work to “crush tickets.” Our goal is to reduce the number of tickets through automation and problem management. Going from 1,000 to 500 tickets means improving the real performance of the customer’s infrastructure, offering value that goes well beyond immediate savings.
Q: In conclusion, does the customer perceive a tangible change with CCDM?
Flavio Patrizio Tassinari: Every customer, regardless of their industry or size, receives tailored attention. We don’t just work to meet SLAs (Service Level Agreements), but also to ensure overall customer satisfaction, perceived service quality, ideas, innovations, opportunities to cut costs, etc.
In this spirit, we’re also evolving our approach to empower IT departments through AI, helping organizations be ready for what artificial intelligence will bring in the coming years. How? Making data and resources increasingly accessible, structured, and usable, enabling automation, faster decisions, and greater strategic value for the business.
Nicola Gandolfi: Customers perceive the change primarily in the quality and fluidity of service.
The transition to the Customer Centric Delivery Model has allowed us to address growing complexity more effectively than the previous model based on competence centers. We have built an approach and culture consistent with this model, which for our most strategic clients translates into a single, stable point of reference with full knowledge of the operational context.
Operationally, the Pod model drastically reduces the “ping-pong” of tickets between different teams: the customer interacts with a single point of contact who truly understands their environment. This translates into faster responses, greater accuracy, and more consistent management of activities. As we said earlier.
In short, the change is not just structural: it is reflected in a more fluid, more responsible service that is closer to the customer’s real needs.
Thank you so much, Flavio and Nicola, for your time and the valuable insights you shared.