If your IT runs on one person, or a small team stretched across helpdesk, security and strategy, you already know the risk: no cover when they are off, no second opinion on the big calls, and no realistic route to senior expertise without a six-figure hire. Co-managed IT means we work alongside your existing team, not instead of them. We take on the heavy lifting, cover the gaps, and bring senior engineers and a virtual CTO on demand, with managed detection and response included as standard.
Co-managed IT is not a smaller version of full outsourcing. It is support designed to sit next to your internal person or team: they keep the relationships, the institutional knowledge, and the final say, while we bring the depth, the cover, and the tooling that is hard to justify for one hire alone.
Co-managed support tends to make sense at a specific point in a company's growth, not before it and not instead of ever building an internal function. These are the signals we hear most often.
Every co-managed engagement starts with the same exercise: agreeing, function by function, who owns what. It is written down, not assumed, and it can move as your team grows.
Pick the parts that make sense for your team, backed by the same standards we run for fully managed clients.
When the queue is longer than your team can clear, or it is 11pm and something has broken, we pick it up. Your internal team is never the only line of defence.
Proactive monitoring, patch management, and maintenance running quietly in the background across the whole estate, day and night.
Microsoft 365 moves, server and cloud migrations, and infrastructure projects, planned and delivered by engineers who do this daily.
Managed detection and response included as standard, not an upsell, watching for the things a generalist helpdesk is not set up to catch.
Senior architecture and planning input for the decisions your internal team should not have to make alone: platform choices, scaling, and risk.
Evidence and process support for ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, and client due diligence, from a certification body and UKAS-accredited team.
Co-managed IT is often the way a regulated or high-stakes business brings in credibility it cannot build alone: a Cyber Essentials certification body, UKAS-accredited ISO 27001, and managed detection and response running as standard across the estate we support, not as an add-on you have to ask for. Your internal team gets the benefit of that accreditation stack without carrying the audit burden themselves.
Bringing in a co-managed partner should not mean handing over control. Here is how we set the split and keep it working.
We sit down with your team and agree, function by function, what stays in house and what moves to us. Written down, not assumed.
We take on the agreed access and systems without disrupting anything your team already owns or the tools they already use.
Monitoring, patching, and MDR run in the background while your team keeps doing the parts of the job only they can do.
Regular reviews with your IT lead and ours, so the split keeps making sense as the team and the business change.
Fully managed means we run the whole of IT for you. Co-managed means you keep an internal person or team, and we work alongside them, taking on the parts that make sense: overflow support, out-of-hours cover, monitoring, security, and senior architecture input. Many clients move between the two as they grow, and we agree the split with you rather than sell you a fixed package.
No. Co-managed support is built to strengthen the person or team you already have, not replace them. They keep the relationships and the day-to-day ownership; we take on the workload that is hard to cover alone, such as out-of-hours support, deep monitoring, and senior expertise on demand.
We price per user and per device, scoped to the functions you want us to cover rather than a fixed bundle. Because every co-managed split looks different, there is no standard list price. Tell us your headcount, your current setup, and where you want support, and we will give you a clear written quote. See our pricing for how we structure it.
Yes, that is one of the most common reasons businesses bring us in alongside an existing team. We agree response commitments with you in writing as part of your plan, and out-of-hours and emergency cover can sit entirely with us so your internal team is not the only line of defence at 2am.
Yes. Managed detection and response runs as standard across every estate we support, and we are a Cyber Essentials certification body and UKAS accredited for ISO 27001, so we can take on as much or as little of your compliance workload as you need. See our cyber security services and governance and audit for the detail.
Some clients stay co-managed indefinitely. Others hand us more over time as trust builds, until we are running the whole estate. Either way, the same accountable team can secure it, build on it, and prove it is compliant.
Book a consultation and tell us what your internal team already owns. We will show you exactly where we would fit, in writing, before anything changes. You will speak to an engineer, not a salesperson.
Hello, I am Ainsley, the assistant here at Dead Simple Computing, and a governed AI assistant we built ourselves. Ask me anything about managed IT, cyber security, software and AI, or governance and audit. I can also put you in touch with a person.
Ainsley is an assistant and can be wrong. For anything that matters you will speak to an engineer.
