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Co-Managed IT vs Fully Managed IT: What's the Difference?

Keep your IT staff and add a partner, or let the partner be the department.

Fully managed IT means the provider is your entire IT department. Co-managed IT means you keep internal IT staff and the provider fills specific roles around them. The right answer depends on whether you have IT people today and what you want them doing.

Fully managed IT

The provider handles everything: help desk, monitoring, patching, security, backups, projects, vendor management and strategy. You have no internal IT employees, or perhaps one office manager who coordinates. This fits most businesses under roughly 100 employees and many larger ones that prefer not to run an IT function. See what are managed IT services.

Co-managed IT

You have one or more internal IT staff. The provider takes the centralized and proactive work (monitoring, patching, backup, security tooling, standards audits, escalation) and your team keeps the user-facing and business-application work. This fits companies that have someone valuable in-house but cannot staff a full department. See what is co-managed IT.

How to decide

  • Do you have internal IT staff you want to keep? If yes, co-managed. If no, fully managed.
  • Is your internal person a generalist doing everything? Co-managed frees them to focus on what needs business knowledge.
  • Do you have specialized line-of-business systems? An internal owner for those plus a provider for infrastructure is a strong combination.
  • Is coverage the problem? Either model solves nights, weekends and vacations.
  • Is security the problem? Either model adds the tooling and the 24/7 operations an internal team cannot run alone.

Can you move between them?

Yes. Companies often start co-managed and move to fully managed when an IT employee retires, or start fully managed and add an internal coordinator as they grow. The provider's platform and documentation stay the same either way.

Mentis Group offers both Fully Managed IT and Co-Managed IT under the same standards and the same Service Delivery Engine. When does an internal IT team need outside help can help you place yourself.

Have a question about your own environment? Schedule a consultation with Mentis Group or call (866) 901-7808.