The benefits of co-managed IT

When most people think of outsourced or managed IT, they likely think of fully-managed IT. With fully-managed IT, you rely on a managed service provider (MSP) to handle all your IT needs.

But there's another option known as co-managed IT.

What is co-managed IT?

Think of co-managed IT as a hybrid model of IT support.

When choosing the co-managed IT model, a business will keep internal IT to handle day-to-day matters such as the service desk, while the MSP handles the heavier aspects of IT support like IT infrastructure, servers, and vCIO responsibilities. Also, having an MSP on your side means you don't have to worry when special projects (or technological disasters) pop up, because you can lean on the MSP for help.

What are the benefits of co-managed IT?

While fully-managed IT is a better fit for small companies, larger companies have plenty reason to adopt the co-managed IT approach.

Your internal IT staff can escalate issues.

With co-managed IT, your internal IT staff are not left alone to fend for themselves.

When issues are too big for them to handle, internal IT can call on the managed service provider for help. This feature comes in handy in situations like ransomware attacks, which are much for one IT person to handle.

Co-managed IT makes scaling up IT easier.

Higher-level IT positions such as Level III tech/specialists and CIO/IT director are expensive to hire, train, and retain. These positions can be outsourced to an MSP while your Level I and Level II techs help with the more common IT occurrences.

In short, the co-managed IT approach is a more efficient way to scale and maintain balance as your business grows.

Co-managed IT knows what your business needs.

Partnering with a competent and certified managed service provider means you don't have to research the technology solutions your company needs.

Whatever problems you're experiencing, the MSP has already seen. And that MSP can get your business outfitted and moving along well before you can figure out what services would most benefit your workflows and needs.

Your co-managed IT partner can train you on the tech.

Not only will your co-managed MSP supply you with the right tools, but they can train your personnel to use the right tools in the right ways.

MSPs have plenty experience with training, as they have to train their own new hires on using that same technology.