I'm the IT Director for a public library system with four branches and about 65 staff. Our internal IT team consists of me and one full-time assistant/help desk technician. We have enough capacity for everyday user support, workstation management, and basic help desk work, but we lack the time and specialized expertise to maintain our network, servers, backups, and security infrastructure.
We've outsourced larger projects before, including wireless access point upgrades and server and switch replacements. Now I'm looking for ongoing support with server updates and backups, physical and virtual machines, on-premises and cloud storage redundancy for more than 10 TB of archival data, network monitoring and security, infrastructure configuration, and possibly managed endpoint protection.
The issue is that nearly every MSP I contact says it can provide co-managed infrastructure support, but the proposals inevitably include managed end-user services such as help desk coverage, workstation patching, email protection, security awareness training, laptop imaging, and per-user support. We have repeatedly explained that we do not need those services.
Is this common because smaller organizations are not profitable enough for infrastructure-only support? Is bundling user services mainly a sales and recurring-revenue strategy, or are there legitimate security and liability reasons for requiring control of the endpoints? How should I define or phrase the engagement so vendors understand that we want infrastructure-focused support with clearly separated responsibilities? I'm also interested in hearing about firms in New England, especially Massachusetts, that genuinely support co-managed infrastructure arrangements.
5 Answers
Some providers will resist taking responsibility for security or uptime if they cannot control the endpoints. A compromised workstation can affect the network, backups, or cloud services, so clarify who owns endpoint remediation, incident response, identity management, and emergency containment. You can still keep endpoint support in-house, but the agreement needs a clear division of responsibility and possibly a process for temporarily granting the infrastructure provider access during an incident.
Put the boundaries in the request for proposal. List the systems in scope, such as switches, wireless, firewalls, servers, virtualization, backup, storage, and monitoring. Then explicitly list what is out of scope. Ask for pricing based on devices, systems, or a defined support block rather than per-user pricing, along with response times, escalation procedures, maintenance responsibilities, and after-hours coverage.
This type of arrangement definitely exists, but traditional MSPs often build their business around per-user recurring revenue. Help desk, endpoint management, and security training are easy to package and bill monthly, while infrastructure work may be periodic or require a more customized contract. Smaller regional providers and independent infrastructure consultants are often more flexible than large or heavily standardized MSPs.
There are organizations that work this way, including providers supporting municipalities, schools, libraries, and other public-sector environments. A common model is for local IT staff to handle tickets and routine user support while a specialist handles network architecture, firewalls, wireless, servers, cloud infrastructure, backups, and complex escalations. A pay-as-needed arrangement for unusual end-user issues can also be included without making full user management part of the contract.
You may get better results by searching for a network infrastructure consultant, systems engineering firm, MSSP, or professional services group instead of using only the term MSP. Describe the engagement as infrastructure-only or co-managed IT, and specify that your team retains ownership of end-user support, workstation patching, imaging, and user-facing tickets.
That makes sense. I’ve been explaining the distinction verbally, but I probably need to make the scope and exclusions much more formal before requesting another proposal.