Your business’ IT is its lifeblood; there’s very few businesses around now that can cope without an effective IT system.
As a result, your internal IT team are absolutely mission critical when it comes to meeting your KPIs, providing the best possible service and keeping everything running smoothly.
Now, what happens if your internal IT team don’t have the resources required to keep up with your ever demanding IT?
Things go wrong. We’re here to stop things going wrong.
So first, let’s start with the basics.
What is co-managed IT support?
Co-managed It support is a blended model, one where internal IT teams and external IT managed service providers (MSP) work collaboratively, with the MSP supporting the internal team with any IT-related issues. This allows organisations to customise their IT support and provides a greater degree of flexibility, outsourcing some IT roles while keeping others in house.
It is designed to help unburden your internal IT team and allow them to focus on the more important parts of their roles.
Who needs co-managed IT support?
Businesses who need co-managed IT are ones that:
- Want both in-house and external IT technicians – Your IT staff are often indispensable, so losing them is non-negotiable. Having someone on-site can be incredibly valuable, but they might sometimes need support. Co-managed IT lets you have both internal IT support and external IT specialists.
- Have specialised IT needs – If your IT staff don’t have the specific skills that your business requires, you can use co-managed IT to supplement their skillset.
- Are growing, but can’t keep hiring – Hiring is expensive, and finding the best talent can be incredibly difficult. An MSP has already gone to the trouble of curating a stellar team, so just use theirs!
Who doesn’t need co-managed IT support?
On the flip side, businesses who might not need co-managed IT are ones that:
- Ultimately want to solely use a third party – If you’re planning on scrapping your in-house team eventually, then you may as well make the switch to fully managed IT services instead.
- Only want to fix one or two issues – If there’s only odd jobs you’d need your partner MSP to handle, then it’s probably not worth the investment, as co-managed IT may well be too much.
- Don’t have enough IT infrastructure to justify the use of a third party – If you’ve got a small IT network, say 1-3 computers, then chances are you really don’t need much more than a single person who is tech savvy on your team.
- Have an extremely complex network – Many businesses have extremely complex IT systems, and that’s fine, however, in this case we highly recommend managed IT services instead, as this ensures your network is properly managed at all times.
Learn more about co-managed IT support in our free guide
There’s a lot more to talk about when it comes to co-managed IT, so rather than make this blog extremely long, we’ve decided to put together a free guide to co-managed IT.
It covers the main benefits, how to decide whether you need it or not, how to get started with co-managed IT and delves into a little more detail on the service.