Co-managed IT is a partnership in which your internal IT staff and a managed service provider share responsibility for your technology. Your team keeps control of priorities and day-to-day decisions, while the MSP adds tools, depth, coverage and project capacity that are hard to build in-house.
Why companies choose co-managed IT
- Coverage: one or two IT people cannot cover nights, weekends, vacations and sick days alone.
- Specialist skills: firewalls, Wi-Fi design, cloud migrations and cabling projects need expertise a small team rarely has in-house.
- Tools: monitoring, patching, backup and security platforms are expensive to license and run for a single company.
- Projects: office moves and upgrades pile up while the internal team handles daily tickets.
How responsibilities are usually split
Every arrangement is different, but a common model looks like this. The internal team owns user relationships, business applications, purchasing decisions and on-site requests. The managed service provider owns 24/7 monitoring and alerting, patching, backup and recovery, security tooling, after-hours response and infrastructure projects. Both teams share a ticketing view and documentation so nothing falls between them.
Co-managed vs fully managed IT
Fully managed IT makes the MSP your IT department, which suits businesses without internal staff. Co-managed IT keeps your people in charge and adds capacity around them. Many companies move between the two as they grow, so it helps to work with a provider that offers both. Read more in what is a managed service provider.
Making co-managed IT work
- Write down who owns what, including escalation paths.
- Agree on one documentation system and keep it current.
- Give both teams visibility into tickets and changes.
- Review the arrangement quarterly and adjust as needs change.
Co-managed IT with Benex
Benex works alongside internal IT teams every day, providing monitoring, security, after-hours coverage and hands-on projects such as network security upgrades and structured cabling. See our managed IT services, check how managed IT pricing works, or request a free quote and a specialist will respond within one business day.