Outsourced and co-managed IT
Outsourcing IT does not have to mean handing over everything. Most of our Calgary clients start by moving the work that keeps their internal person awake: overnight alerts, patch cycles, vacation coverage, and routine tickets.
Two models
The right answer depends on whether you already employ someone technical, and on what you want that person spending their week doing.
CoreData takes the whole function: help desk, monitoring, endpoint protection, patching, backup, licence and vendor management, and technology planning. Suited to businesses with no internal technical staff, or with a departing IT hire nobody has replaced.
You keep: budget authority and final say on direction. We carry: the pager.
CoreData covers defined layers, commonly 24/7 monitoring, security tooling, patch management, and after-hours escalation, while your internal IT staff keep project delivery, business relationships, and the institutional knowledge that is genuinely hard to outsource.
You keep: your person, and their context. We carry: the parts that do not scale with one headcount.
What gets transferred
The most common failure in an IT outsourcing transition is a provider replacing systems before understanding them. CoreData documents the environment first: what exists, who supports it, what it costs, and when it renews.
Only then does anything change. Businesses with undocumented environments take longer, and we say so during the assessment rather than after the contract.
When it makes sense
If your IT hire cannot take two consecutive weeks off without something going unmonitored, the risk is structural rather than personal.
Patching, MFA rollout, and backup testing are the first things to slip when the same person is also handling day-to-day tickets.
Scattered subscriptions, auto-renewing licences, and undocumented vendor agreements usually mean the real number is higher than the budgeted one.
Environments that worked at fifteen people tend to break somewhere between forty and sixty, usually at identity and file access.
Insurance renewals and enterprise client security reviews now ask for evidence, not assurances. Producing it takes documentation most small teams do not have.
Co-managed arrangements are often requested by the internal hire, not around them. Removing ticket volume is usually a retention move.
Scope
The monthly scope is written down, line by line, so "is that included?" has a documented answer instead of a negotiation.
A staffed desk reachable by phone, email, or the desktop agent, with response targets by severity in writing. See help desk support.
Servers, endpoints, network equipment, and backups watched continuously. Most issues become tickets before they become phone calls.
Operating systems and key applications kept current on a schedule, with end-of-life deadlines tracked so nothing runs unsupported by accident.
Endpoint protection, MFA enforcement, verified backups, and recovery testing as standard, connected to our continuity practice.
One party accountable for carriers, software renewals, and hardware suppliers, with renewal dates tracked and cancellation windows not missed.
A rolling technology plan with replacement timelines and budget visibility, reviewed with you on a schedule, plus onboarding and offboarding of staff done same-day.
The real comparison
For most Calgary businesses under about a hundred staff, the honest comparison is not outsourcing versus a full IT department. It is outsourcing versus one internal hire. One person, however good, cannot cover 24/7 monitoring, help desk, security, projects, and their own vacation. An outsourced team covers all of those simultaneously, at a monthly cost that is typically well under a fully loaded salary, and it does not resign, take parental leave, or carry the environment out the door in one head.
Hiring is still the right call in specific cases: when IT is your product, when a role is mostly business analysis rather than operations, or when you already have the ticket volume to keep two or more people busy. And the middle path is real: many of our engagements are co-managed precisely because the business already employs someone worth keeping. The wrong answer is the default one, a single hire carrying structural risk nobody has priced.
Common questions
Not usually. Most Calgary co-managed engagements exist specifically to keep an internal hire and remove the parts of the role that do not scale with one headcount.
A fixed monthly fee based on users and devices under support, with the scope written down. Project work is quoted separately so it does not appear as a surprise line on a monthly invoice.
They are inventoried, not automatically replaced. We document what exists and what it costs before recommending any change, and the reasoning is written down.
Discovery and documentation typically run two to four weeks, followed by a staged handover so support coverage never lapses at any point.
Yes. Starting with monitoring and after-hours coverage is common, with help desk and vendor management moving across later once the working relationship is proven.
They overlap heavily. Outsourcing describes the decision to move the function outside; managed IT is the service model it usually lands on. CoreData delivers outsourced IT through Assurance+ managed IT.
A full outsourced arrangement for a typical small or mid-sized business usually costs well under one fully loaded technical salary, while covering more hours and more disciplines than one person can.
You keep your documentation, credentials, licences, and backups: they are yours throughout. Handover obligations are written into the agreement up front, because a provider confident in its service makes leaving easy on paper.
Access is role-based and logged, our own staff use MFA and documented offboarding, and confidentiality is contractual. Ask any provider you shortlist to describe the same three things about themselves.
Talk with our team
We will inventory what you have, tell you what is already working, and price only the gap.