Business owners in London often encounter the terms “co-managed IT” and “fully managed IT” without a clear picture of where one model ends and the other begins. Both models involve external expertise, but the key distinction lies in who is responsible for the daily IT operations.
Think of fully managed IT as bringing in a flight crew to manage your technology, while co-managed IT adds a co-pilot alongside the IT resource you already have. This comparison will help you identify which approach more closely fits your current setup.
Co-managed vs. fully managed IT: what’s the difference?
Under fully managed IT, an external provider effectively becomes your IT department. Everything from day-to-day help desk to long-term technology planning moves outside.
With co-managed IT, your internal IT person or team stays central and retains control of the environment they already know. Attache adds capacity where the workload or need for specialist expertise has grown.
Who is fully managed IT best suited to?
Fully managed IT services fit businesses without a dedicated internal IT person and businesses that have grown past the point where an owner or office manager can keep IT running alongside their real job.
Attache Group takes on the role of an in-house IT department. That covers:
- help desk support
- security monitoring
- backup and business continuity
- cloud environments
- vendor management across your stack
- long-term technology planning through a virtual CIO
Businesses without internal IT often fall back on reactive support, which means finding someone to resolve each problem as it comes up and hoping it does not repeat. That approach works when problems are small and infrequent, but modern IT environments have too many moving parts to keep pace as the business grows. Statistics Canada reports that 16 percent of Canadian businesses were impacted by cyber security incidents in 2023, with total recovery spending doubling to $1.2 billion nationally. For businesses without dedicated internal IT resources, that makes ongoing security monitoring and maintenance increasingly important.
Who is co-managed IT support best suited to?
Co-managed IT services fit businesses that already have an internal IT person or a small team but where the workload has grown beyond what one or two people can cover well. The internal team stays central to the way your technology runs, and Attache adds capacity around them.
- A stretched internal IT team shows a few tell-tale signs;
- support tickets take longer to resolve than they used to
- routine maintenance work keeps getting deferred
- the internal IT person can’t take leave without work piling up in their absence
- security and compliance responsibilities are harder to keep on top of
- specialist projects like a Microsoft 365 migration or an office move keep getting pushed back because there’s no time to run them alongside daily support.
When these patterns show up, co-managed IT support fills in around your existing team without displacing them. Attache can extend after-hours help desk coverage and take on strategic technology planning your IT lead cannot find time for. Attache can also provide specialist expertise that the internal team does not have in-house. The internal person keeps their role and their context. Your business gets the capacity a one-person or two-person IT function cannot deliver on its own.
Choosing between co-managed and fully managed IT
Working out which model fits comes down to a short self-check about your current setup. The prompts below are drawn from the internal assessment Attache runs when speaking with prospective clients.
- Do you have anyone internal whose job description formally includes IT?
- If yes, how often does that person get pulled away from IT work to handle other responsibilities?
- When something breaks after hours or on a weekend, who deals with it?
- Are routine maintenance and security work being completed on schedule, or do they keep sliding?
- Would it be difficult for your current IT person or team to take two weeks off without something falling behind?
- Do upcoming projects such as a Microsoft 365 migration or an office move look manageable alongside daily workload?
If you don’t have anyone internal, or your existing IT support amounts to a contractor you call when things go wrong, fully managed IT is the closer fit. It gives you one team responsible for the whole picture and reduces the day-to-day technology management falling to business leaders.
Businesses with an internal IT person or team that recognizes the strain in the later prompts find co-managed IT the closer match. The internal knowledge stays where it is, and the added capacity relieves the pressure without changing the reporting lines your business already runs on.
What fully managed and co-managed IT have in common
Both models give businesses access to proactive IT management and strategic technology guidance. Both can also include Attache’s virtual CIO layer, helping connect technology decisions with the direction of the business.
Cybersecurity remains important under either model. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s Baseline Cyber Security Controls for Small and Medium Organizations sets out practical controls covering areas such as incident response, patching, authentication, employee awareness, backups, and access control. The Cyber Centre recommends that organizations scope and tailor these controls to their own requirements.
The difference between fully managed and co-managed IT is therefore less about whether the business has access to proactive management, security expertise, and strategic guidance, and more about how responsibility for the technology environment is divided between Attache and the internal team.
Book your London IT support assessment
If your business has no dedicated internal IT resource and fully managed IT sounds closer to your situation, explore Attache’s Fully Managed IT resources for a closer look at what ongoing IT management can include.
If you already have an internal IT person or team and need additional capacity or specialist expertise, explore Attache’s Co-Managed IT resources to see how external support can work alongside your existing team.
Still not sure where your business fits? Book a complimentary IT assessment with Attache’s London team to review your current setup and get a clearer picture of the support model that suits your situation.
FAQs
Is co-managed IT cheaper than fully managed IT?
Not necessarily. Pricing depends on factors such as the number of users, the scope of support, and which responsibilities remain with your internal team. Co-managed and fully managed IT divide responsibilities differently, so compare the scope of each option rather than assuming one model will always cost less.
Can I switch from co-managed to fully managed IT later?
Yes. A business’s IT requirements can change over time. For example, if an internal IT resource leaves and the business decides not to replace them, moving from co-managed to fully managed IT may become appropriate. The important point is to reassess who will be responsible for day-to-day IT management as your internal resources change.
Does co-managed IT replace my internal IT person?
No. Co-managed IT is designed to work alongside your internal IT resource. The internal person keeps ownership of the environment they know and stays your first point of contact. Attache provides added capacity and specialist expertise around them. Businesses often move to co-managed IT specifically to prevent an increasing workload from falling entirely on one person.
