Managed IT services
Your IT department, for a monthly fee
Helpdesk, security, backups, patching, hardware, and the network underneath all of it. One number to call, one bill, and someone who already knows how your business is put together.
What it means
A managed service provider, without the acronym
An MSP is a company you pay monthly to run your technology, instead of employing an IT department or calling someone hourly once things have already stopped. You outsource the day-to-day operations and get a predictable bill.
In practice that means we look after the computers your staff use, the servers and cloud services behind them, the network tying it together, the backups, and the security around all of it. When something goes wrong your people call us, not you.
What's covered
Eight areas, one agreement
No bronze, silver and gold. One contract, sized to your business, covering the whole stack rather than the parts that are convenient to sell.
Helpdesk and end-user support
Day to day, for your staff. Password resets, software that won't install, a laptop that won't join the Wi-Fi, a printer nobody can reach. One number, and whoever picks up already knows your setup.
Monitoring and response
We watch the things that tend to precede an outage: uplink health, power draw on the switch, device temperature, storage filling up, access points flapping. You hear from us before your staff does.
Cybersecurity
Endpoint protection and threat monitoring on the workstations, firewall policy and segmentation on the network, and phishing awareness training for the people who'll be targeted first.
Backup and disaster recovery
Automated backups, offsite copies, and restores that get tested rather than assumed. Ransomware is the scenario this exists for, and an untested backup is a guess.
Patching and updates
Operating systems and applications kept current on a schedule, on a known tested version rather than chasing latest. Updates are planned, and you're told what changed.
Device lifecycle
What you own, how old it is, what's still under warranty, and what needs replacing before it fails. Procurement, setup, and secure disposal when a machine reaches the end.
Network and infrastructure
Switching, wireless, firewalls, cabling, cameras, and door access. The part we started in, and still the part most likely to be the real cause when something feels slow.
Strategy and compliance
A technology roadmap you can budget against, hardware planned before it's urgent, and the documentation and controls an auditor asks for. Effectively a part-time IT director, without the salary.
Compared to calling someone hourly
The difference is who benefits when it breaks
Break-fix means you pay per incident. It's a reasonable arrangement, and it has one structural problem worth naming.
| Break-fix, hourly | Managed, monthly | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | Hourly, or a fee per incident | A fixed monthly amount you can budget |
| How it works | Reactive. Something breaks, you call, someone comes | Proactive. Monitored continuously so most of it never breaks |
| Where the incentive points | The invoice grows when your systems fail | Prevention is already paid for, so the work that stops outages gets done |
| What downtime costs | Unpredictable, and worst when you can least afford it | Minimised by maintenance you never have to think about |
The third row is the one that changes how the work actually gets done. Under hourly billing, maintenance is the hardest thing to get approved, because nobody wants to authorise an invoice for a server that is running fine today. So it gets deferred, and it stays deferred until it turns into an emergency that costs a great deal more than the maintenance would have.
A monthly agreement pays for the boring part up front. Patching, monitoring, backup checks and the rest happen on schedule, and you usually hear about a problem from us before your staff notice it.
Why businesses do this
The team you can’t afford to hire
Covering this properly in-house means a helpdesk technician, a network engineer, someone who understands security, and someone senior enough to plan. That’s four salaries, plus benefits, plus cover for holidays and the day one of them resigns.
Most businesses under a couple of hundred people can’t justify that, so they hire one generalist and quietly hope. It works until the thing that breaks is outside what that person does.
A managed agreement gets you the range for a fraction of the payroll. You’re buying access to the skills, not a seat somebody has to fill.
What we need to quote it
- How many people, and how many locations
- Roughly how many computers, servers, and phones
- What's on the network now, if you know
- Whether anything carries compliance obligations
- How quickly you need someone on site
- Anything currently driving you up the wall
“Managed services” is the first option on the form.
Pricing
A fixed number, after we've looked
What it costs depends on how many people you have, how many devices, how many sites, and how fast you need someone through the door. We work it out from the real count, not a guess, and you get one monthly figure before you sign anything.
Most agreements start with an assessment, because quoting support on an environment nobody has examined is guesswork that gets corrected later at your expense. If we built it, we already know what’s in there.
Rather not think about IT at all?
Tell us how many people and what's in the building. We'll come back with a monthly number.