In House, Co-Managed or Hybrid: New Models For Outsourcing IT Support

You know you need better IT but you don’t know the best way to get it: Hire in-house or outsourcing IT support with a managed service provider (MSP)? Why not choose both with a co-managed or hybrid plan.

For some companies small and large, co-managed service provides the best of both worlds. Some of the IT is done in house by your IT team and other tasks are outsourced to an MSP. Anything that is under the MSP contract is covered 24/7/365 so you are never caught short-handed.

MSPs cater their services to whatever your business needs and can change gears if some combinations work better than others. But, before we go on to  describe the benefits of co-managed service, here’s a reminder of the two other types of IT.

Hiring In-House IT Staff

With an in-house IT team, you have technology advice just a few steps away. But consider what it takes to have that team. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do I have the expertise to hire my own IT person?
• Do I know how to manage that person in his/her role as my IT expert?
• Can one person handle my needs or will I need more, perhaps with different IT talents?

Once these questions are resolved, you (or someone on your staff) needs to advertise the job, screen the resumés, interview candidates and then negotiate the terms of the hire. While that person is doing that, what’s happening to his or her normal company responsibilities?

When you get your own in-house team set up,  who takes over their responsibilities when they go on vacation or take sick leave? Or if your infrastructure is hit with malware in the middle of the night, who do you call?

The cost of an in-house IT team will depend on the number of people required and their level of experience.

Average IT Needs of Companies

Average Salary for In-House IT in Cincinnati-Dayton *

Outsourcing IT Support to an MSP

Managed service providers (MSPs) like Intrust,  provide 24/7/365 customized IT coverage to meet your particular business needs. The MSP team is usually much larger than you could afford to hire in house and has people experienced and specialized in specific areas of IT such as cyber security, IT infrastructure or cloud maintenance. You benefit from that collective knowledge and a support team large enough to cover your IT problems at a moment’s notice any day at any time.

Since managed service providers earn the same amount each month no matter how many support issues they fix, they have an incentive to keep your network running smoothly. Their proactive approach is what sets them apart from traditional break-fix IT outsourcing. And, with an MSP, you no longer have to worry about IT salaries, benefits, coverage, attrition, recruiting, retaining and management.

Get our Managed IT Checklist to help you choose IT support for your business.

In most cases, small to medium sized businesses will save money using a managed service provider over hiring an in-house IT support team.

Monthly Costs for IT Services in Cincinnati-Dayton

Here are just some of the benefits of outsourcing your IT services to a quality managed service provider:

• Better value for your money
• Full coverage 24/7/365 with no burnout
• A diverse range of expertise and experience
• Best-in-class tools and processes
• Automatic scaling as your user count changes: This is true for growth as well as periods of contraction.
• Incentives to be as efficient as possible

The Co-Managed or Hybrid Solution

With co-managed IT support, you keep your internal IT team and supplement it with outsourced IT support. It can be called co-managed IT, hybrid IT, supplemental IT or other terms. For larger companies there are significant advantages to this approach.

First, you keep the major pros of in-house IT:

• IT techs are physically in the office during business hours (aside from sick/vacation time).
• Your in-house techs focus their work on your business and know it extremely well.

Then you add on the benefits of an MSP at a fraction of the cost it would take to build in-house. You decide how much supplemental IT support you want from the MSP and in what areas. Here are just a few ways co-managed IT support can work:

• Your in-house IT team handles day-to-day IT maintenance and user support, but relies on the MSP for highly specialized components, like cyber security.
• Your MSP becomes an outsourced CTO or CIO, helping you with strategy, planning and tool selection while your internal IT team executes those plans and manages your systems.
• Your MSP fills in the gaps after hours, for vacation coverage and during times of turnover, providing valuable continuity while you recruit, hire and train new IT personnel.

Every business is unique. Whether you are considering a fully outsourced or co-managed solution, Intrust customizes services to meet your specific business needs and goals. We’re here to help.  Contact us or book a no-obligation meeting.

*Salary data comes from salary.com for the Cincinnati/Dayton area.