Managed IT services for small businesses: looking after your IT without an in-house IT department

IT management is the maintenance that prevents outages. It consists of a number of recurring tasks: monitoring servers and the network, planning and carrying out updates, checking backups, managing users and permissions, keeping track of licences and planning the replacement of old equipment. Documentation goes with it, so it is known what is there and how it is set up.

What exactly is in an agreement depends on your business. An office with ten laptops in the cloud has different concerns from a business with its own server and several locations. We record what we monitor, what we report and what we fix straight away, so you know what you are getting.

Support helps when something is broken or a user has a question. Management makes sure as little as possible breaks. If you only buy support, you pay per call and depend on who is available that day. If you buy management, you have a fixed partner who knows the environment and takes on the maintenance.

For a business with more than a handful of workstations, management is usually the wisest choice. A major outage often costs more than the maintenance that would have prevented it. You can read more about the difference under IT support and helpdesk.

A switch starts with an inventory of devices, accounts, subscriptions and agreements. Then comes a baseline check of updates, security and backups. We request the management details from the previous provider, plan the handover outside working hours and only take over once everything works. You remain the owner of your accounts, your domain and your licences.