What is a retainer in managed services?
A retainer reserves fixed specialist time for your data environment. What it covers, how it differs from ad-hoc support and when it pays off.
Robin du Maine
Blog & insights
Articles by cimt consultants on DAMA, AI readiness, the EU AI Act, data integration, governance and analytics. No marketing: what we learn at clients, translated into what you can apply.
A retainer reserves fixed specialist time for your data environment. What it covers, how it differs from ad-hoc support and when it pays off.
An SLA for a data environment covers more than response times: scope, availability, reporting and change management. What it typically contains and how cimt fills it in.
Qlik is a Gartner Leader in Analytics & BI for the 16th year running. What that means in the agentic AI era, from our consultants' practice.
Qlik makes Agentic Data Engineering GA in Qlik Talend Cloud. The new AI agents for catalog, data quality and data products, and what they mean for governance.
Free Qlik event on 23 June 2026 in Rotterdam on moving from AI experimentation to production. What it is, why it's worth attending, and how to register.
Data products are gaining ground as an organising principle for data delivery. What they are, why they are worth the effort, and where things go wrong in practice. Plus: how the DAMA DMBoK foundation makes this workable without spinning up a new department.
Qlik introduced the MCP Server for the Model Context Protocol. What it is, why it matters for governed AI on business data, and how to deploy it without giving up data sovereignty.
The EU AI Act has been in force since 2025. What changes for data governance, data lineage and quality, and how to make your data foundation demonstrably compliant without paralysing your organisation.