Overview
Co-managed IT extends the people you already have. Your team keeps ownership of what they do best while we take on the heavy lifting, escalations, security, and strategy, so nothing waits on a single overloaded person.
We define a clean split of responsibilities, plug into your tools, and act as the senior bench your internal staff can lean on, with the platform depth of a Microsoft-aligned partner.
How We Work
Consultation
We assess your environment and your internal team's strengths, then agree exactly which responsibilities sit on each side.
Integration
We plug into your tools and processes, document the environment, and stand up the monitoring and escalation paths.
Ongoing partnership
Your team keeps the keys and the context; we bring depth, coverage, and a vCIO layer that keeps strategy moving.
What's Included
Tier 2 and 3 escalation
Complex troubleshooting, identity work, and platform configuration handled by specialists.
Security operations
Email security, endpoint defense, and identity protection owned by us across the board.
Shared administration
A documented split of duties and runbooks so handoffs are clean.
vCIO advisory
Quarterly strategic reviews and roadmap planning alongside your internal lead.
Onboarding playbooks
Repeatable new-hire provisioning your team can run with confidence.
Living documentation
Co-maintained documentation both teams can edit and trust.
Implementation Options
Three ways to start, depending on how much certainty you want before you commit. Estimates and rates are quoted in your proposal.
T&M Onboarding
- The full onboarding and stabilization on time and materials, billed to actual hours as consumed
- A written estimate up front, revisited at every phase gate
- Design and build run in parallel: the blueprint evolves while early phases are already being delivered
- Scope stays flexible, with changes approved through a written change order
- Simpler footprints with a clear picture of their requirements
- Teams comfortable steering scope as the work unfolds
Fixed-Fee Assessment & Roadmap
- The first phase of a full onboarding and stabilization, run as a standalone engagement with its own deliverables (we call it Phase 0)
- Current state documented, future state designed, and the onboarding and stabilization blueprint delivered
- A fixed-fee onboarding and stabilization proposal, priced against confirmed scope
- Deliverables are platform-agnostic, not tied to Microsoft or to us, and detailed enough for any qualified partner to quote a fixed fee
- The fee is credited in full toward the onboarding and stabilization if you proceed with us within three months
- Complex or unclear scope, where guessing is expensive
- Boards and leadership teams that prefer the certainty of a detailed roadmap and fixed-fee scope before implementation kicks off
Fixed-Fee Onboarding
- Follows a completed Discovery & Design engagement
- The onboarding and stabilization at a fixed price, quoted against the scope confirmed in discovery and design
- Milestone billing tied to deliverables you can verify
- Change orders only when the scope itself changes
- Budget certainty required before kickoff
- Regulated or board-governed purchases
Support & Training Options
The same engineers behind all three; what changes is how much of the platform and the day-to-day sits with us. Fully managed IT is a different engagement, on its own page.
T&M Support
- Hourly escalation support behind your internal IT, with no monthly fee
- Named projects scoped in writing before work starts
- Access to senior engineers for the problems one person cannot carry
- No commitment, and no service level agreement
- IT leads who mostly need a second opinion and occasional depth
- Teams keeping every tool and process in house for now
- Starting small and proving the relationship before committing to a term
Shared Resources + T&M Support
Everything in T&M Support, plus:
- Our monitoring and management agents across your fleet, with administrative access for your team as well
- Endpoint detection and response, with alerts landing in our security operations
- A documentation platform and a live asset inventory, both editable by your team and portable if the relationship ends
- A shared support portal and ticket queue, so your staff and ours work the same queue
- Patching on a validated cadence, and backup verification
- A password vault for the team
- A reduced hourly rate on support and project work
- An internal team that wants a managed provider's tooling while keeping the work
- Getting visibility and control in place before deciding how much support to buy
- A predictable platform cost, with support that scales to what actually happens
Co-managed IT
Everything in Shared Resources, plus:
- Your IT lead stays in charge and stays first line; we cover tiers 2 and 3
- Our lowest professional services rate on project work
- Identity and multifactor administration alongside patching and backup verification
- Coverage when your IT person is out, so vacations stop being theoretical
- Quarterly strategy reviews with our vCIO
- A service level agreement on escalations
- Solo IT managers carrying a whole company alone
- Leadership that wants continuity beyond one irreplaceable person
- Teams strong on the day-to-day that want depth behind them on identity, security, and platform work
Who This Is For, and Who It Is Not
A strong fit if
- You have one to five internal IT staff covering more surface than the headcount allows.
- Your team is strong on the day-to-day and wants depth behind them on identity, security, and platform work.
- Escalations, projects, and roadmap work all queue behind the same person.
- You want to keep the help desk and the internal relationships, and hand off the specialist work.
- Coverage thins out whenever your IT lead is on vacation, and disappears entirely if they leave.
A poor fit if
- You have no internal IT staff. Fully managed is the cleaner structure, and it is a different engagement.
- You want extra hands with no defined split of duties. Co-managed works when both sides know who owns what.
- Your internal team wants to keep every function in house. The model depends on genuinely handing pieces over.
Frequently Asked Questions
All questionsWhat is Co-managed IT?
Co-managed IT puts our bench behind your internal IT person. They stay in charge and stay first line; we bring the escalation depth, the tooling, vacation coverage, and a second set of eyes on security.
How is this different from hiring a second IT person?
Hiring a second IT person costs a salary and still gives you two single points of failure. Co-managed gives your one person a whole team's depth for a fraction of that, without taking their job or their authority.
Who is co-managed IT for, and who is it not?
One-person IT departments at growing companies: the person is good, but they are stretched, they cannot take a real vacation, and some problems are simply bigger than one person. Much of the tooling is already in the Business Premium licensing you own. If nobody internal owns IT at all, there is nothing to co-manage, and fully managed IT fits better. The model also depends on the internal person seeing a bench rather than a threat, so we set that up clearly from the start.
We already have an IT person. What happens to them?
They stay in charge. Co-managed IT is built around your internal lead: they remain first line for their own team, we take the escalations, they get admin access to every tool we bring, and someone senior covers them when they take a vacation. Several of our co-managed clients came to us specifically because their one IT person was at a breaking point.
How fast do you respond?
Tickets go to an engineer first, with an average first response around 30 minutes during business hours. System-down issues carry an SLA. Support hours flex to where your team works, including multi-time-zone remote teams.
Do you put monitoring software on employee laptops?
We manage devices and security: patching, encryption, threat detection, and access control. We do not install employee-surveillance software, and we decline requests for it. If a productivity question comes up, that is a management conversation, and software is the wrong tool for it.
Do you require long-term contracts?
No. Our standard commitment is a rolling 90 days, so we earn your business every quarter. Everything we build lives in your own Microsoft tenant with nothing proprietary in the way, which keeps that promise real: you could hand the keys to any provider tomorrow.
What if we eventually build an internal IT department?
Everything we build lives in your tenant, documented, with no proprietary lock-in, so you can take it in-house or to any provider whenever that makes sense. The rolling 90-day commitment is designed for exactly that.
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