Co-managed IT support that works alongside your internal team
Your IT team keeps the business running. We take the tickets, the cover and the specialist work they never get time for.
Co-managed IT support means you keep your in-house team and add ours behind them. Your first line engineers handle day-to-day support the way they always have. Anything they cannot clear, or should not have to, escalates into our service desk on a shared ticket queue. Everyone works the same tickets, so nothing sits waiting for one person to come back from lunch.
It also covers you when your team is short. Holiday, sickness, a resignation, a project that swallows a month: the queue keeps moving because our engineers are already in it. Every ticket gets a response within 15 minutes, and your people stay the face of IT inside the business.
Talk to us about co-managed IT support
Enter your details and we will call you back to talk through how the work would split between your team and ours.
Delivered by our Brighton-based engineers, and rated 4.9 stars by the businesses we support.
Three things you get from day one
A shared ticket queue
Your team and our service desk work the same queue in the same system. You can see what we are doing, we can see what you are doing, and tickets stop falling between the two.
Escalation when you need it
Your first line engineers keep the everyday work. Anything harder goes to our specialists: servers, networks, Microsoft 365 and cyber security incidents.
Holiday and sickness cover
When your team is down a person the queue does not back up. Our engineers pick up the extra tickets for a week, a month, or however long it takes.
What a co-managed IT service usually covers
No two arrangements are identical. Most clients start by handing over the work their internal IT team either cannot cover or would rather not own. Some keep all end-user support in-house and buy escalation only; others hand us the helpdesk queue as well and keep their people on strategic projects.
Escalation support
Second and third line tickets your first line engineers pass up, with the same 15-minute response as everything else on the queue.
Cyber security
Managed detection and response, patching, and the compliance support you need for Cyber Essentials and client security questionnaires. Cybersecurity threats do not wait for your IT manager to come back from leave.
Microsoft 365 and cloud services
Tenant configuration, identity, licensing, SharePoint and Teams, plus the cloud infrastructure and infrastructure management nobody has had time to tidy.
Extra capacity
Additional support when a project lands, an office moves, or an acquisition doubles the user count for six months. The level of support scales up and back down again.
Projects and migrations
Server replacements, cloud migrations and rollouts your team would rather not run alongside the day job.
Documentation and roadmap
A written record of how everything is set up, proactive best practice reviews, backup and disaster recovery testing, and a rolling plan for what needs replacing and when.
Where your team ends and ours begins
Our engineers work alongside yours under a support model agreed in writing before we start, and reviewed as your team changes. A typical arrangement looks like this.
What happens when it all rests on one or two people
Most internal IT teams we meet are competent and stretched. The problems are rarely technical.
What changes for your internal IT team
Co-managed IT services are judged on what your own internal staff are able to do once the pressure comes off. The point of the co-managed model is to reduce pressure on internal teams, not to sideline them.
They stop firefighting
With escalations and user support handled, your team gets time back for the strategic projects that actually move the business forward.
They get specialists behind them
Certified engineers in security, networking and Microsoft 365 they can call on for ongoing support, instead of an evening spent reading forums. Technical resources on tap, without another salary.
They stop being a single point of failure
Holiday gets taken, illness stops being a crisis, and a resignation is no longer a business risk.
Co-managed IT vs fully managed IT
Fully managed IT services mean we run everything: the service desk, infrastructure, security and projects. That is the best fit for businesses with no internal IT at all.
Co-managed IT support suits businesses that already have someone in-house and want to keep them. You get the tools, the specialist expertise and the cover of a managed IT service provider without giving up the person who knows your business best. Think of it as complementary IT support: an extension of your team rather than a replacement for it. Plenty of mid-sized businesses start with co-managed services and stay that way for years, because the internal relationship is worth keeping.
If you are not sure which service model fits, ask us. Sometimes the answer is fully outsourced IT support; sometimes it is keeping everything in-house and buying escalation cover only.
What co-managed IT support costs
Every co-managed arrangement is priced on its own terms. We quote once we understand the shape of the work, and three things set the figure.
Where the line sits
A team handing us second line escalations only costs less than one handing us security, patching and projects as well.
How many users and devices
The tooling side is priced per user and per device, so the size of your estate matters more than the number of support tickets.
How much cover you need
Occasional holiday cover is different from a standing arrangement where we pick up a share of the queue every week.
HOW WE QUOTE
Built around your split
Fixed monthly fee · Block of hours · Block of hours with agreed response times
Which one fits depends on how much of the queue you want us holding. The split of responsibilities is written down either way.
Projects and one-off migrations are quoted separately.
Not sure where your team needs the help?
A 20-minute conversation is usually enough to work out whether co-managed IT fits your team, and what the split would look like. If it does not fit, we will tell you.
Co-managed IT support from Brighton, across Sussex and the South East
We work from the Sussex Innovation Centre at Falmer, just off the A27 at the bottom of the A23, with free parking and none of the traffic that comes with getting into central Brighton. That matters when your team needs an engineer on site rather than on a call.
Our engineers provide onsite support across Sussex, Surrey and Kent, and remote support services anywhere in the UK. Co-managed IT support services here are scalable: the arrangement flexes with your business needs as the team grows or shrinks. Ingenio is an Assurix Trusted MSP, the first in the South East, which means our processes are checked independently rather than described in a brochure.
TESTIMONIALS
Join the ranks of our satisfied customers!
Add a team behind your team
Tell us how your IT is set up now and we will show you where co-managed support would take the pressure off. You can reach us on 01273 806211 or through the contact page.
CO-MANAGED IT SUPPORT
Common questions about co-managed IT
Frequently asked questions
What does co-managed IT support actually mean?
You keep your internal IT team and add an external provider alongside them. Both work the same ticket queue, with an agreed split of who handles what. Your team stays the first point of contact for staff; we handle escalations, specialist work and cover.
Will co-managed IT replace our internal IT team?
No. The point is to keep them. We take on the work that stops them doing their job, not their job.
How does the shared ticket queue work in practice?
Both teams work in one system. Tickets raised by your staff land in a queue your engineers see first, and anything they escalate comes to us with the full history attached, so nobody has to explain the problem twice.
What if our IT manager is off for a month?
We pick up their share of the queue for as long as they are away. This is one of the most common reasons businesses go co-managed in the first place.
Do we have to change all our existing tools?
No. We work with what you have where it makes sense. Where our own monitoring, patching and security tooling is a better fit we bring it, and you stop paying for yours.
How quickly do tickets get answered?
Every ticket gets a response within 15 minutes during service desk hours, which are 08:00 to 18:00 Monday to Friday. Overnight threat detection and response runs around the clock through our managed cyber security service.
Is co-managed IT only for large IT teams?
No. Most of our co-managed clients have between one and four internal IT people. A single IT manager with no cover is the most common starting point.
Do you cover backup and disaster recovery?
Yes. Backup, replication and disaster recovery testing are a common part of a co-managed IT support arrangement, because they are the jobs that get postponed when a small team is busy.
Is co-managed IT support scalable if we grow?
Yes. The level of support flexes with your business needs. Taking on twenty more users, or opening a second site, changes the figure rather than the arrangement.
Can we move to fully managed IT later?
Yes, and some clients do when an internal person retires or moves on. The split is reviewed as your team changes.
