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Running IT in your business is a 24/7 job. Your business relies on IT to run smoothly, meaning your team must consistently deliver reliable, secure, and available systems.
With economic pressures rising, you might be looking for a way to address IT issues and delivery areas while keeping costs under tight control.
Co-managed IT services allow you to augment your IT operation with the right products and services to free your team and add capability or skills without the additional overhead of growing your internal headcount or the potential for runaway new costs.
It also allows you to benefit from enterprise-grade products without the hassle the maintenance overhead of running the supporting infrastructure. Your company won’t bear the full burden of the licencing costs through the economies of scale.
What to outsource?
Co-managed IT is a team effort between your in-house IT department and your chosen IT partner (or MSP). This could be anything from additional desktop support, strategic advice for your on-the-ground desktop support team, managed cyber security services or anything in between.
The first step is identifying what systems and services you need to deliver. Some common targets are:
- Support in day-to-day tasks such as troubleshooting, functioning as the help desk for employees, or on-the-ground resources.
- Technical escalation for your internal IT team, augmenting capability.
- Strategic technology advice and guidance for your leadership team.
- Auditing and compliance as a service (such as Cyber Essentials or ISO27001).
- 24/7/365 Cyber security monitoring and incident response (SIEM, EDR).
- Maintenance and patching for servers and infrastructure.
- Vulnerability scanning and management.
- Pen Testing and reporting.
- User cyber awareness training.
- Backup and disaster recovery solutions and management
- Management of remote locations.
Who uses co-managed IT services?
Businesses that move to this model typically have over 100 users on the network and have one thing in common; they have some form of internal IT resource, such as a first-line service desk agent to look after the users on the floor, an IT director or CIO that sets out strategy but doesn’t need to be burdened with the day-to-day operation. Or they might have a complete IT team that needs additional resources at a specific geographic location, technical expertise, or a managed service.
Some businesses that use co-managed IT may also be rapidly growing, and outsourcing enables the IT function to “stand up” quickly to service the company while efforts are made to recruit and build an internal team.
Co-managed isn’t for everyone
Co-managed suits businesses that understand the need for a managed IT model. This kind of service doesn’t suit “ad-hoc” work and should be addressed under a professional services project with a clear scope.
It typically only suits larger businesses or businesses with more complex IT estates, both with some form of internal IT resource. If you don’t have any in-house IT support, you may wish to fully outsource the management of your IT infrastructure.
Check out our blog, ‘How Does Fully Managed IT Support Benefit Your Business?’, to find out how Netitude can also help with fully managed IT support.
Want to explore the options?
Co-managed is the perfect solution for a business that needs to fill a knowledge gap or require additional resource but also understands the work and costs involved in building a fully functioning IT team.
Netitude’s Co-managed service is tailored to the client’s specific needs; pick and choose from our service catalogue to build the ideal solution. To help determine if Co-managed is the right fit for your business, check out the following statements:
- You need IT support but want to keep some IT expertise in-house (that may be any element, from 1st line through to CIO).
- Your network and user base are large, or your network is complicated enough to warrant an entire team of people being involved.
- IT downtime has a high impact, and you need resources available beyond what you can keep in-house.
- You rapidly need IT expertise and don’t have time to recruit.
- You need to offload certain aspects (such as Security operations, monitoring, backup and disaster recovery) to allow your internal team to concentrate on other areas.
If one or more statements ring true, get in touch with our team of experts today to discuss Co-managed options.
