IT & Cloud
Co-managed IT
Support behind your own IT team: the routine work and the difficult tickets taken off them on an agreed split, by engineers who answer within three rings.
Who it is for
Organisations in Teesside and the North East that already have an IT person or a small IT team and want to keep them. Your team knows the business and should stay in charge; what it lacks is time for the routine work, cover when someone is away, and a second opinion when something unusual goes wrong.
What you get
A written split of responsibilities between your team and ours: patching, monitoring, security policies and the tickets you pass to us handled by Odyssey engineers, your people free for the projects the business needs, and a service desk your staff can call when your IT person is on holiday. The split changes as you grow, and if you ever decide not to run an in-house team, we can take it all on.
The problem
Your IT person or team is capable but stretched. Patching, monitoring and service desk tickets crowd out the projects the business actually needs, and there is nobody to ask when something unusual goes wrong.
In a business that has grown, IT is often one person, or two, and they are good at it. But routine work fills the week: updates and patching, a laptop build, a new starter, the printer, the password reset. The project the board asked for keeps slipping. When they are on holiday there is nobody for staff to call, and when something they have never seen before goes wrong, there is nobody for them to ask either.
The usual answers both cost the business. Hiring a second person for routine work is expensive and leaves the same single point of failure on the hard problems. Replacing the team with an outsourced contract throws away the people who know how the business works. Co-managed IT keeps your team in charge and adds ours behind them.
The split is agreed at the start and written down: typically the background managed service (updates, patching, monitoring, end of life planning), the security policies in Microsoft 365, and whichever tickets your team would rather hand over, with your people keeping the applications, the relationships and the projects. We bring the tools, the monitoring and a service desk answered within three rings; your team brings the knowledge of the business, and chooses request by request what to keep.
What Odyssey provides
- A written split of responsibilities between your team and ours, adjusted as your team grows or its priorities change
- Updates, patching and monitoring for every device and server, handled on a schedule by our team
- Microsoft 365 security and compliance policies set up and maintained to an agreed standard
- Service desk cover for your users when your team is busy or away, with the tickets they pass to us
- A second opinion on the difficult tickets, and consultancy on complex projects and best practice
- A monthly report of what we did, who did it and how long it took, so your team sees where the hours went
What is included
| Included | Detail |
|---|---|
| Onboarding | Your estate audited and documented with your team, and the split of responsibilities agreed and written down |
| Managed service | Updates and patching on a schedule, monitoring, problems spotted and fixed, end of life planned ahead, for the devices and servers in our half of the split |
| Security policies | Microsoft 365 security and compliance, Entra sign-in policies and multi-factor authentication, set up and maintained to the agreed standard |
| Service desk | The tickets your team passes to us, and your users' calls when your team is busy or away, answered within three rings |
| Escalation | A second opinion on difficult tickets from a senior engineer or tech consultant, at the same rate as any other hour |
| Projects | Consultancy and hands-on help on request, from your retained hours for minor projects |
| Reporting | Every month, what was done, who did it and how long it took, with a conversation when a pattern shows up |
Not included, or sold separately
- Your half of the split
- The applications, relationships and projects your team keeps are yours; we do not take over work you have not handed to us
- Major projects
- Anything that needs a project manager is surveyed and priced fixed, separately from the retainer
- Microsoft licences
- Supplied per user per month as a Microsoft partner, charged separately
- Hardware
- Computers, laptops and servers are supplied and set up as a fixed-price project
- Backup and recovery, mobile device management, email filtering and awareness training
- Each is its own service and can be added to the same retainer
- Out of hours
- Calls at any time reach our out-of-hours service desk rota; work done out of hours is never drawn from retained hours and is charged at the consumed list rate for the grade of engineer in use
How it is delivered
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Look at the whole estate together
An IT health check with your team: hardware, software, networks, security and backup readiness, with the risks ranked and explained in person. It gives both sides the same picture before anything is divided up.
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Agree who does what
A written split covering patching, monitoring, security policies, service desk tickets and projects. Your team keeps what it wants to keep; we take what it would rather hand over. The split is reviewed as you grow.
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Agree the retainer
Hours each month sized to our half of the estate, a cap on how far past them we may go before we stop and ask, and a term of 12 to 60 months with the discount fixed for the whole term.
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Bring our half under management
Monitoring and patching tools on the devices and servers we look after, Microsoft 365 policies set to the agreed standard, and the documentation shared with your team, scheduled so it does not affect day-to-day operations.
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Work the split, month by month
Your team passes us tickets and calls us for a second opinion; our service desk covers your users when your team is busy or away. The monthly report shows what we did, and the split changes when you ask it to.
Why trust Odyssey with this
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In-house
All work completed by Odyssey employees, never subcontracted
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3
Calls answered within three rings, and a director is always reachable
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ISO
ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified by NQA
- Actively working within 2 hours on anything urgent, in writing
Questions people ask
How is co-managed different from fully managed IT?
With fully managed IT we are your IT team. With co-managed IT your own team stays in charge and we take on the parts it hands to us, from routine patching to the difficult tickets, on a split that is written down and can change.
Can we change the split over time?
Yes. The responsibilities are agreed at the start and adjusted as your team grows or its priorities change. If you later decide not to run an in-house team at all, we can take the whole of it on.
What routine work can you take off our team?
Updates, patching and monitoring for devices and servers, the Microsoft 365 security and compliance policies, and whichever service desk tickets your team passes to us, so your own people have time for the projects the business needs.
Can you cover the service desk when our IT person is away?
Yes. Our service desk takes your users' calls and the tickets your team passes to us when it is busy or away, answered within three rings, so tickets do not wait for someone to come back from holiday.
Who do our staff call?
Whoever you decide. Many clients keep their own IT person as the first call and route overflow and holidays to us; others give staff our number for everything in our half of the split. We write the arrangement into the split so nobody is unsure.
How is it priced?
From a retainer sized to the part of the estate we look after, at one rate whoever does the work and discounted by up to 35% depending on the term. There is no price per user, and the cap you set means a month never costs more than you agreed.
Will you work with the tools our team already uses?
We bring our own monitoring and patching tools for the devices in our half of the split, and we document what we do so your team can see it. Tell us what you run and we will agree what stays and what changes during onboarding.
Can you give our IT person a second opinion without taking the work away?
Yes. Escalating a difficult ticket to one of our senior engineers or tech consultants costs the same as any other retained hour, so your team never has to weigh up whether a question is worth asking.
Challenges this helps with
Related services
Ask about co-managed IT
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