Co-Managed IT Services
Co-managed IT means your internal IT staff keep ownership of strategy, on-site work and the relationships, while CloudTechForce supplies the parts a one- or two-person team cannot cover: 24/7 help desk overflow and after-hours, monitoring and patching, Microsoft 365 administration, security monitoring and response, backup verification, and project engineers on demand. You pay per user for a narrower scope than fully managed IT, typically 40–60% of a fully managed plan.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05 by Muhammad Ali, CTO.
Who co-managed IT is for
- A 75–500 person company with one to three IT staff who are on call every night and never get to projects.
- An IT manager who needs Microsoft 365, Intune and security expertise without hiring three specialists.
- A business that wants to keep IT in-house but needs coverage for holidays, sickness and turnover.
- A company that failed with a fully outsourced provider because nobody was on site and wants a hybrid instead.
How we split the work
| Area | Your team | CloudTechForce |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy and budget | Owns | Advises in quarterly reviews |
| Walk-ups and on-site hardware | Owns | Backs up during absence |
| Help desk (business hours) | Owns tier 1, or shares | Tier 2 and 3 escalation |
| Help desk (nights, weekends, holidays) | – | Owns |
| Monitoring, patching, RMM | Uses our platform | Runs and reports |
| Microsoft 365 and Entra ID administration | Shares | Owns hardening, licensing, Intune |
| Security (EDR/MDR, email security, alerts) | Receives reports | Owns monitoring and response |
| Backup and DR | Reviews | Owns verification and restore tests |
| Projects (migrations, cloud, network) | Owns priorities | Supplies engineers on fixed-price quotes |
| Documentation | Shared system, your ownership | Maintains |
You choose the split; it is written into the scope so there is no ambiguity about who owns a ticket at 2 a.m.
What your team gets
Most co-managed clients cut their own tool spend by consolidating.
- Escalation to specialists: Microsoft 365, Azure, security and networking engineers without hiring them.
- After-hours coverage in the plan: our team works across time zones, so nights and weekends are not a premium add-on.
- Reporting you can show the CFO: ticket volumes, response times, patch compliance, security events, licence waste.
- A bench for projects: Intune rollouts, tenant migrations, SharePoint restructures, cloud moves.
What it costs
Co-managed plans are priced per user for the scope you choose:
| Scope | Per user / month |
|---|---|
| Monitoring, patching and after-hours help desk | Quoted in writing |
| Plus Microsoft 365 administration and security monitoring | Quoted in writing |
| Plus tier 2 and 3 escalation during business hours and quarterly reviews | Quoted in writing |
Projects are quoted separately at fixed prices. No setup fee for standard onboarding; quarterly agreements.
How onboarding works
- Week 1: documentation review with your team, agent deployment, escalation matrix agreed.
- Week 2: security baseline gaps closed together, backup verification, after-hours routing tested.
- Week 3: first joint review; handover of anything your team wants to give up.
Frequently asked questions
Will you try to replace our IT person?
Who owns the tools and documentation?
Can we start with just after-hours coverage?
How is co-managed different from staff augmentation?
What does co-managed IT cost?
Talk to an engineer, not a salesperson
Book a 15-minute call, or send us your current IT invoice and we will tell you what we would change. No obligation.
help desk 24/7