Co-Managed IT Services

Co-managed IT is a collaborative support model where your internal IT team shares responsibilities with a managed services provider (MSP). You keep ownership of your IT roadmap while the MSP fills skill gaps, adds capacity, and provides specialized expertise such as cybersecurity, monitoring, or after-hours coverage.

With fully managed IT, the MSP owns and runs your entire IT environment. With co-managed IT, your internal team retains control and shares responsibilities with the MSP.

Fully managed suits organizations with no internal IT staff; co-managed is designed for businesses that already have in-house IT and need extra expertise, capacity, or coverage.

Co-managed IT is built for organizations that already have internal IT staff but need additional expertise, scalability, or operational support. It works especially well for small and midsize businesses that have outgrown a small internal team but are not ready to build a large enterprise IT department.

Co-Managed IT is ideal for organizations that:

• Have an internal IT team but need additional expertise
• Want to offload time-consuming tasks like monitoring, patching, or helpdesk support
• Need expertise with complex solutions such as advanced cybersecurity
• Require backup support for IT staff to ensure 24/7 coverage

While co-sourced IT may not fit all organizations, those looking for flexible, scalable IT support to work alongside existing IT staff often find co-managed IT a valuable option.

No. Co-managed IT is designed to support and strengthen your internal team, not replace it. You define which responsibilities stay in-house and which areas Exigent covers, and your team keeps control of the IT roadmap.

Exigent pairs each co-managed client with a dedicated Technical Advisor who serves as your main point of contact. From there, you select at least one Augment subscription based on what you need managed: Infrastructure Management, End User Support, or Workstation Management.

Augment includes a dedicated Technical Advisor plus at least one subscription:

1. Infrastructure Management (monitoring, alerting, patching and break-fix for servers and network equipment)
2. End User Support (remote, onsite and after-hours support for employees)
3. Workstation Management (onboarding/offboarding plus monitoring, patching and break-fix for workstations and laptops).

Pricing depends on the number of users, support scope, service responsibilities, infrastructure complexity, and any added cybersecurity or compliance needs. Exigent uses per-user/per-device pricing tied to your chosen subscriptions so costs stay predictable.

Co-managed IT uses the same framework as Exigent's fully managed agreements: annual agreements for stability, backed by a 90-day worry-free guarantee so you can confirm the partnership is meeting expectations.

In a typical co-managed arrangement, responsibilities are divided based on each team's strengths. The internal IT team often handles employee onboarding, application-specific support, and strategic planning, while the MSP covers infrastructure monitoring, patch management, cybersecurity operations, and after-hours support. Some tasks, like project execution and vendor management, may be shared or shifted depending on workload and complexity.

For many organizations, yes. Co-managed IT provides access to experienced engineers and specialists without the overhead of recruiting, onboarding, training, and retaining full-time staff, and it delivers predictable monthly costs that simplify budgeting.

A reputable MSP providing co-managed IT services should share a documented service level agreement with your team, and be held to those delivery promises - just as you would expect to do with a fully managed services agreement.

As part of The Exigent Method, every one of our clients gets a clear scope of services, documented deliverables, and frequent checkpoints. We ensure everyone understands what Exigent is responsible for, what your internal team handles, and what "success" looks like — and then we measure against those.

A reputable MSP follows industry cybersecurity standards and legal regulations. Exigent uses least-privileged access, strong audit logging, personnel background checks, and encryption, and shares evidence of security protocols as part of the partnership.

Not at all. Co-managed clients receive responsive service and support following the same SLAs as fully managed clients. We use experienced technical staff across the board, and your Technical Advisor remains a constant touchpoint to maintain continuity and accountability.

We design the co-managed partnership to reduce friction, not add it. In your onboarding, Exigent helps define roles, responsibilities, tools, and communication workflows so that oversight is streamlined. Your technical advisor plays a central role to ensure alignment. Our clients typically see faster project delivery and less time "managing the MSP" because we do the heavy lifting and align our processes with yours.