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Managed Vs. Co-Managed IT – Which Do I Need?

KEYPOINTS FROM ARTICLE:

  • Hiring traditional full-time staff gets extremely expensive when placing experts in your organization.
  • An outsourced IT service can be the solution that improves all your business operations.
  • Managed IT means that a service provider looks after pretty much all the aspects of your organization’s IT.
  • Co-managed IT, on the other hand, works with your existing in-house IT staff to fill in gaps, provide expertise, or even to cover support after-hours.
  • In some cases, Co-managed providers are hired to only handle specific aspects of a companies technology, like the network, security and/or Telephony.

Managed Vs. Co-Managed IT Services

Which one do you need?

 

Well-managed IT services are essential in any industry and as technology advances, it offers many new opportunities to businesses and organizations.

Managed versus Co-managed Services, Managed Vs. Co-Managed IT – Which Do I Need?At the same time, however, these advances are making IT more difficult to manage in-house. But as technology continues to specialize to some degree, hiring traditional full-time staff gets extremely expensive.

For some, the ability to control a full-time employee makes the most sense and for some, outsourcing the entire process makes the most sense. In the middle of course is Co-Managed, which draws a little from column A and a little from Column B, making it highly customized and leaving the part stakeholders want to keep or feel is already well in hand.

An outsourced IT service can be the solution that improves all your business operations, but this is a good time to outline the two main types of outsourced IT: managed and co-managed.

Both have their own pros and cons, so it’s important to understand these differences in order to choose the right service for your organization.

From our perspective, co-managed is our specialty, and with our entire team of experts, we can handle both the day-to-day and/or to engage in bigger projects. It gives you boots on the ground and works nicely for those random hardware issues. The way we like to look at it, we include professional services hours that they are free to use any way they’d like, from infrastructure to Teams Telephony and collaboration integration.

So, What are the differences between Managed and Co-managed IT?

IT is a highly important aspect for any company. Unfortunately, it is also a major expense, so more important of a decision, it could not seemingly be.

According to the Wall Street Journal, global spending on IT is expected to reach $3.9 trillion by the end of this year, an increase of 3.4% from 2019. Many organizations find that it is most cost-effective to outsource their IT services. This outsourcing can either take the form of managed or co-managed IT services. On top of this, secondary services like hosting, cloud and managed services sector are expected to grow by 13.3% by 2023.

Let’s look at it from somewhat high above.

Managed versus Co-managed Services, Managed Vs. Co-Managed IT – Which Do I Need?Managed IT Support Services

Managed IT means that a service provider looks after pretty much all the aspects of your organization’s IT. This means that the IT, security, backup, telephony, and other services are handled completely by service providers like us, so your staff won’t need any training or additional duties. This is often a preferred option in smaller or less technical industries that can’t afford such high-level IT knowledge on a full-time basis, or companies offloading specialty areas, like security or disaster recovery.

Co-Managed IT Support Services

Co-managed IT, on the other hand, works with your existing in-house IT staff to fill in gaps, provide expertise, or even to cover support after-hours. Under the co-managed strategy, the service provider may primarily handle the more difficult projects that require specialist resources, or they may focus on pressing needs that the existing team needs help with, freeing them up to work on strategic projects. A co-managed outsourced IT strategy is highly customizable, affordable and works directly with your existing team.

Managed vs. Co – The Service Provider Perspective 

Managed versus Co-managed Services, Managed Vs. Co-Managed IT – Which Do I Need?It’s rare for us to find a company that has no IT resources in place, and it’s much more common to find an existing employee managing those efforts.

Sometimes a business has someone, or more than one person internally that performs some of the IT department roles, but they are not able to perform all of them. This could be due to them not having the time, or perhaps it’s that they do not have the skills. After all, that is a LOT of skills and they do change quickly and frequently. A business of this nature can initiate a co-managed IT support arrangement with a managed IT services provider, and in this scenario, the managed IT service company’s role is to support the internal staff and the IT department better.

Co-managed IT support is where the managed IT services firm fills roles that are not filled internally, they support the internal staff to get all work complete and be able to provide full metrics to management. In this scenario, we are tasked to identify gaps, and to “augment” or supplement these needs with our own expertise.

In some cases, the managed IT services firm may support all the network and security work while the internal staff handles all the computer systems and user support. In other businesses, the managed IT services firm may simply provide help desk user support while all other tasks are addressed internally including business phone systems and small business cloud services. It can be any combination of tasks distributed in ways that make sense for the business.

Whether managed or co-managed, outsourced IT support can be highly beneficial to all businesses and organizations. These services make IT systems and processes more effective, allowing your operations to run more efficiently and securely, and often reducing costs at the same time.  If you need more help on these issues or anything else, we would love to talk to you and explain the many benefits that come from managed and co-managed services.  Feel free to call us at 888-603-1033.

In The Cloud Technologies - Boston, MA

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