Co-managed IT
Your person stays in charge. We stand behind them.
You already have somebody looking after IT. Co-managed keeps them, keeps them in control, and gives them the tooling, the cover and the specialist depth that no one-person department can carry alone.
The fortnight this fixes
Your IT person goes on holiday, and so does your IT.
They have earned the break. They have also been the only person who knows the admin password, the layout of the server room, and which of the three things that look broken is actually broken. So the fortnight either gets spent not touching anything, or it gets spent phoning them at the airport.
The same thing happens when they are ill, when two problems land at once, or when something comes up that is genuinely outside what they do. None of that is a failure on their part. It is what happens when a whole function rests on one person.
This is for you if
Any of this sounds familiar.
- You want to keep your own IT person, not replace them
- They are good, and they are stretched thinner than you would like
- Holidays, illness and turnover leave you genuinely uncovered
- They need tools that cost more than one seat can justify
- Your IT is remote or at head office, and nobody is local
- Projects keep getting pushed because the day to day eats the week
- Security has moved past what one generalist can reasonably hold
- Nothing is written down, and the person who knows it is retiring
Co-managed, up close
It takes a few different shapes.
All of them keep your own person in charge. What changes is what sits behind them, and how much of it you need.
The partnership
You want your own IT person, permanently
Not a stepping stone to anything. You want someone in the building who knows your business, and you want them properly equipped and properly backed up.
They keep the relationships and the day to day. We bring the tooling, the specialist depth, and somebody to call at 2am so it is not always them.
Most common with: businesses that have grown past informal IT and hired their first dedicated person.
The distributed team
Your IT is remote, or sits at head office
They handle the systems well enough from where they are, but nobody can walk to the server room, meet a courier, or sit with the person whose problem nobody can reproduce over a call.
We are the hands and the local presence, working to their direction rather than around them.
Most common with: branch offices, and businesses whose IT sits in another province.
The handover
Your IT person is heading toward retirement
Often it is not even an IT manager. It is a CFO or an operations lead who took IT on years ago because somebody had to, and none of what they know is written down.
We run a gradual transition that starts while they are still here, so the knowledge gets captured rather than lost.
Most common with: long-standing businesses where one person has quietly held it all together.
What you get
Pick the parts you are missing.
Co-managed is deliberately modular. Nobody needs all of it, and paying for the parts you already have is how these arrangements go wrong.
The tool stack
- Monitoring and patching across every device
- Endpoint protection and email filtering
- Documentation and password management
- Ticketing, so work stops living in someone’s inbox
The backstop
- Cover through holidays, illness and turnover
- Overflow when two problems land at once
- After-hours escalation so it is not always the same phone
- A second opinion before a big decision, not after
Local hands
- Somebody who can physically attend, in Greater Victoria
- Hardware received, configured and deployed
- Sitting with the person whose issue will not reproduce
- Working to your person’s direction, not around them
Specialist depth
- Security work beyond what a generalist should carry
- Backup and recovery design, and tested restores
- Network and Microsoft 365 work at project scale
- Advice on the thing nobody has done before
Project capacity
- The migration that keeps getting pushed to next quarter
- Office moves, cabling and server room work
- Hardware refreshes planned rather than reacted to
- More on projects →
Knowledge capture
- Your environment written down, and kept current
- Credentials held properly rather than in one head
- A handover that works if somebody leaves
- Documentation your person owns as much as we do
The part people actually worry about
We are not auditioning for your IT person’s job.
It is the unspoken question in every co-managed conversation, and it is a fair one. Plenty of arrangements that start as support end as replacement, and your IT person has probably seen that happen to someone.
So we say it plainly. Your person stays in charge. They set direction, they hold the relationships, they decide what we touch and what we do not. The line is written down before we start, and if the arrangement ever stops working, you keep the documentation, the tooling records and the environment we helped build.
An IT person who feels undermined will quietly route around you, and then nobody is covered. It only works when it works for them too.
- Your person sets direction
- Scope agreed in writing, up front
- They keep admin, not us alone
- Documentation is yours to keep
Where the line sits
Agreed before anyone touches anything.
The arrangements that fail are the ones where nobody said out loud who does what. This takes an afternoon and saves a year of friction.
Typically your person
- Day to day requests from staff they already know
- The applications specific to your business
- Vendor relationships they have built
- Deciding priorities and what gets approved
Typically us
- The tool stack, and keeping it running
- Patching, monitoring and the security layer
- Cover when your person is away or buried
- Specialist and project work, on their say-so
Typically, not always. Some businesses want us on the help desk and their person purely on projects. Others want the reverse. The split is yours to set, and it gets revisited as things change.
Terms
What you are committing to.
Contract length
Between 36 and 60 months, depending on the package and what is added to it. Longer terms carry a lower monthly cost, and we will show you both numbers rather than steering you.
Onboarding
Quite often waived on longer agreements, depending on how complex your environment is and what state the existing configuration is in. We will tell you which applies after we have looked.
Notice
Between 90 and 120 days before the end of the term, depending on contract length. Written into the agreement rather than buried in it, so nobody is caught out by a renewal date.
Questions we get asked
The things owners actually want to know.
Pulled from the central library, tagged for this page. All questions and answers →
Related
Often taken alongside this.
Bring your IT person to the call.
Genuinely. The conversation goes better with them in it, and if they are not comfortable, the arrangement will not work anyway.
Would rather write?
Send this and we will reply, usually the same business day. No call unless you want one.
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