Co-managed MSPs lack clear RACI

“So I’m the “solo IT” guy at my current place (well, me and my non-technical manager) and we have a managed service contract (in practicality it’s co-managed since I’m the internal IT) with a local MSP. This MSP has been in a relationship with my current place since 2007 so they have some good history together surprisingly enough. Overall, I’d say they’ve been decent (7/10) over the past few years I’ve been dealing with them. There’s a tech who been assigned to us and we’re around the same skill-”

“I recently signed a six-week minimum contract with an MSP. My responsibilities include: - Learning their Microsoft Cloud environment, RMM, and security tools. - Creating and validating SOPs for the entire customer onboarding process. - Assessing and onboarding at least one customer into production. - Training NOC staff to independently support the environment. - Completing documentation, testing, and the final handoff. I have around 20 years of IT experience, primarily in MSP support, Microsoft”

“I'm setting up a company and I need to work with support to get the installation on the remote system. I put the QuickBooks license in, but I can't log into QuickBooks or even see it. I have the installation file but it won't upload. I called in and being honest, told them who I was but that I control the entire account. The only way they would validate me is to get the account owner on the phone, and they are always extremely busy. Moreso, I can call one of my technicians and tell t”

“As I’m working for a rather big MSP, usually we would need just the first 3 points and then based on that we create a quote. There is always something in the contract where it mentions that even in an as-is takeover there is always a cost item to cover item 4 and 5 in case they are shitty.”

“I have to take over from an MSP basically and become the solo inhouse guy. I have worked for enterprise before and am fairly up to date. Has anyone else dealt with this, and if so how? If not do we have some advice. submitted by /u/Old_Faithlessness623 [link] [comments]”

“I was recently hired into an IT role and was under the impression that internal IT managed most of the environment. After starting, I found out our MSP controls the RMM, network infrastructure, and most permissions/access. It feels like they have ownership of nearly everything, while internal IT has limited control. I'm looking for guidance from those who have dealt with similar setups. Is this normal for an MSP relationship, or should internal IT have administrative access and ownership of”

“Yes, it's typical. They are scum and will try and oust you the second they can. They will generate a relationship with anyone above you and when the time is right they'll propose they take over your job duties and charge significantly less. The truth is they'll charge more but that won't be in the proposal to take your job. Most likely they added these just so you can see what they offer in an attempt to get more work. The more they spread in your organization, the harder it is f”

“I'm in a very similar situation, but we have an MSP who are quite happy to only work on the specific things we ask. We have PAYG end user support for when I am out of office.”

“I’m the IT Director for a public library system with four branches. Our IT team consists of myself and one full-time IT assistant/help desk technician. I’m looking to outsource some of our network, security, and infrastructure support. We’ve already outsourced larger projects such as WAP upgrades and server/switch replacements, but I don’t have the networking expertise, or frankly the time, to confidently handle the ongoing maintenance of this infrastructure. About half of my role is general adm”

“I'm a solo 'IT Manager' doing literally anything a 50 person company needs, including actual IT manager work such as dealing with vendors and researching software, sysadmin stuff, helpdesk, mounting TVs, whatever. It's not particularly overwhelming, but I have ADHD and find I'm having trouble with tasks falling off my plate and no one to keep me accountable about coming back around to them. We used to have Monday but it wasn't quite handling it for me and we're gettin”

“Not necessarily. Depends on the company. My MSP is very laid back. My techs have time to learn and bs. We are happy and because of this tickets are solved in like 15 min max. We have access to our largest co managed environments to ticketing system. All I can say is 2k unanswered tickets. Those poor souls.”

“A lot of comments already said to make that list of who does what, but I'll add to that to leverage the MSP for what they're good at, which will be a question for the MSP to answer. Usually it's stuff like monitoring (security (local and cloud!), backups, systems health...) and deploying stuff. Remember that they're optimized to handle large amounts of "stuff", be that rolling out changes globally, or documenting infra or deploying a dozen new laptops in a single day. B”

“I work for an MSP, I onboarded a new co-managed client in the spring, do the usual, implement our stack, add client to our tools, give access to the client's sysadmin, onboard him into our ticket management system, show him how it works, how to escalate, set his queue to auto-forward for when he's sick or on vacation, etc. Our normal co-managed setup basically, where we take care of infrastructure, backups, monitoring and supporting the on-site team which does the day to day. I've be”

“MSP here that does co-management specifically. As others have said, make sure you understand the contract with the MSP and identify if there is a RACI matrix. If there isn't, I would work with the MSP to put one together. If you use their ticketing system, they can likely add you to it so you can work tickets and collaborate with them, same thing for their RMM. Based on the small amount of info I have from you, I imagine you will be handling all hardware onsite tasks and likely will be taske”

“Speaking as an MSP Guy that does have a couple of co-manage clients, the advice to document everything is very important, and it has to go both directions. Think of the MSP as your 3-5-person operations team to handle things when you're busy doing high-level planning and /or projects, or just handling Help Desk crap while you go camping. Make sure they have proper procedures and checklists for the tasks you need them to perform for you and it should keep everyone happy and productive.”

“Hey everyone, I recently stumbled into a role where I will be co-managing an environment with an MSP, im the only admin. As I have never dealt with this before. Im hoping to get some expierences out there to set realistic expectations. What in your expierence has been overstepping? We own all hardware, they manage all softwares and have been the only IT for years. Just looking to temper my expectations as I dont know whats realistic and whats not in a system like this. submitted by /”