Co-managed IT Support for Internal IT Teams
How outside support can add senior capacity without replacing or working around your internal team.
Read the guide ->
Co-managed IT
Co-managed IT that makes your IT team stronger, not smaller.
Senior escalation, security depth, project capacity and holiday cover for in-house IT teams across Sheffield and the North. You keep the keys, the knowledge and the credit. We fill the gaps around you.
From the founder
I’ve had your job.
For six years I was the in-house IT manager. Strategy, budgets, a team, suppliers, and the phone that rang whenever anything broke.
I know the feeling when an outside provider turns up and you can tell they’re measuring your desk for their own furniture.
Then I spent nine and a half years on the other side of the table, as the senior engineer clients rang first. Very little of that time was spent replacing anyone. Most of it was spent alongside the client’s own IT people. The operations manager still in the building at two in the morning. The one-person IT department holding an entire business together with goodwill and a spreadsheet.
Plenty of providers see internal IT as the thing standing between them and a bigger contract. I see it the other way round. A capable in-house team is one of the best things a business can have. They know the people, the awkward systems and the history. What they rarely have is time, a senior second opinion, or anyone to cover them when they’re off.
That’s the gap co-managed IT should fill. Not your job.
Sean Parkin · Founder & Principal Consultant
Who does what
A clear split, agreed before day one.
Every arrangement is different, so yours gets written down before anything starts. This is where most teams begin.
| Area | Your team | NorthMSP |
|---|---|---|
| Users and day-to-day requests | Leads. You know the people and the quirks. | Second line, and first line when you’re off or snowed under. |
| Business applications | Leads. Usually the knowledge nobody else has. | Looks after the infrastructure, access and security underneath them. |
| Microsoft 365 and identity | Day-to-day admin: users, licences, mailboxes. | Security baseline, conditional access, governance and drift checks. |
| Security monitoring | Sees every alert and judges the business impact. | Managed detection and response, with automated containment around the clock. |
| Patching and endpoints | Approves change windows and exceptions. | Runs patching, endpoint protection and the reporting. |
| Backup and recovery | Knows what matters most, and in what order. | Designs it, watches it and restore-tests it. |
| Projects and migrations | Owns the priorities and the business side. | Senior hands for migrations, Azure, networks and refreshes. |
| Escalation | Calls it in. | An experienced engineer picks it up, to published response targets. |
| Holiday and sickness | Takes the holiday. Properly. | Covers, from access and documentation agreed in advance. |
| Reporting to leadership | Presents it. It’s your function. | Provides the evidence, the numbers and a plain-English write-up. |
Want to keep more? Keep more. Want to hand more over? That’s fine too. The line moves as your team does.
Common shapes
Three ways it usually works.
The shape matters less than the clarity. Any of these work when both sides know where the line is.
Behind your helpdesk
Your team stays front of house for users. We sit behind with escalation, security operations and project delivery.
Suits teams of two or more.
Split by domain
You own the business applications you know inside out. We own infrastructure, Microsoft 365 and security end to end.
Suits teams with a specialist focus.
The one-person IT department
IT is one capable person. We’re everything that person can’t be at once: escalation route, project team, holiday cover and second opinion.
Suits a sole IT manager.
What’s included
Senior depth where your team is thin.
Pick the parts you need. Leave the parts your team already does well.
Senior escalation
When something is beyond the team’s experience or capacity, it comes to an engineer who has seen it before. Not a first-line queue.
Security operations
Endpoint protection, managed detection and response, Microsoft 365 hardened to a CIS-aligned baseline, and Cyber Essentials preparation. Your team keeps full visibility.
Project capacity
Migrations, Azure, network and server refreshes, identity clean-ups. Delivered with your team, and documented for your team.
Holiday and sickness cover
Access and documentation agreed up front, so a fortnight in Spain stops being a business risk.
Shared visibility
Your team sees the monitoring, alerts, tickets and documentation for your environment. No black box, and nothing held back as leverage.
A second opinion
Before a big spend or a big change, a senior view from someone who isn’t trying to sell you the answer.
Evidence for leadership
Security reporting, Cyber Essentials evidence and plain-English write-ups your MD and your insurer will actually read.
Strategy, when you need it
If the business needs technology strategy owned at board level, our sister brand NorthCTO provides fractional CTO and CISO leadership.
What we won’t do
Things we won’t do to your team.
Co-managed IT goes wrong when the provider is quietly playing a different game. So here are the rules we play by.
Angle for a fully managed contract by the back door.
Go round you to your MD or finance director.
Keep monitoring, tickets or documentation out of your team’s sight.
Hold admin access or passwords as leverage.
Sell you tools your team already has.
Treat your team as the problem to be solved.
For IT managers
Making the case to your MD.
Asking for outside help can feel like admitting the job’s too big. It isn’t. It’s what good IT managers do when the business has outgrown one or two people.
The case usually rests on three things.
Key-person risk. If the knowledge lives in one head, the business has a single point of failure. Auditors and cyber insurers ask about it more every year.
Capacity. Projects stall when the day job wins, and the day job always wins.
Depth. Security now needs specialist time that most internal teams can’t spare, however capable they are.
Co-managed support is often cheaper than another senior hire, and it covers more ground than any one person can. If it helps, we’ll put the proposal together in terms your finance director recognises. You present it. It’s your plan.
From IT managers
What in-house IT leads have said.
Career feedback on our founder’s work alongside internal IT teams. Identities withheld to respect confidentiality.
I was on site and out of my depth with our Aruba core switches, so I made a distress call. He came straight out and had the environment back up and running within about ten minutes of arriving — well beyond my own technical understanding of the kit.
Couldn’t be happier with the work — I’ve passed my thanks up to our MD.
Getting started
How it starts.
Mapped and written down first, so nobody discovers the line in the middle of an incident.
1
Talk to you first
Not a pitch to your MD over your head. A conversation with the person who knows the environment.
2
Map the split
Who does what, who approves change, whose ticketing system is the record, and how escalation works.
3
Access and visibility
Named admin access, shared documentation and monitoring your team can see. Set up before anyone is under pressure.
4
Baseline
A security and backup review of the environment, restore test included, with quick wins agreed with you.
5
Review and adjust
Regular reviews with you. The split moves as your team grows, changes or hires.
Co-managed IT questions
What IT managers ask us.
Not this one. Co-managed IT only works when the internal team is respected, and our model depends on it. We won’t angle for a fully managed contract by the back door, and we won’t go round you to your leadership. If your organisation ever wants fully managed IT, that should be its own decision, made openly, with you in the room.
Your organisation does. We agree named, auditable access for our engineers when we map the split, and emergency break-glass accounts stay documented and owned by you. Nothing about your environment should ever be held as leverage, by anyone.
Not necessarily. We agree whose ticketing system is the record before day one. Where we bring our own tooling, such as monitoring, endpoint protection or managed detection and response, your team gets visibility of it for your environment.
Yes, and it’s one of the most common reasons teams come to us. Cover works properly when access and documentation are agreed in advance, so we set that up at the start rather than on the morning someone calls in sick.
Per engagement, because no two splits are the same. The main factors are the number of users and devices, which areas we take on, and the security tooling involved. You get a clear monthly figure, agreed with you, before anything starts.
Fully managed means we are your IT function. Co-managed means your team stays in charge and we add depth, capacity and cover around them. If there’s no internal IT at all, fully managed is the honest answer.
No. Staff augmentation is extra hands directed hour by hour. Co-managed IT is senior capability with clear ownership: we own the areas we’ve agreed, to published response targets, and your team owns the rest.
Yes. We’re based in Sheffield and work across South and West Yorkshire, north Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Most co-managed work is remote by nature, so we support teams further afield too, and come on site when the job needs hands on hardware.
Related guidance
Worth reading next.
Practical guides for in-house teams weighing up outside support.
Microsoft 365 Security Baseline for SMEs
The tenant controls that should be in place before Microsoft 365 becomes the easiest route into your business.
Read the guide ->Why Tested Backups Matter More Than Backup Software
Backup software isn’t recovery. What a restore test proves, and what a green tick doesn’t.
Read the guide ->
Let’s talk
Tell us where the pressure actually is.
A conversation with you, not a pitch to your boss. We’ll say plainly whether co-managed support would help, and what it would look like for your team.