Co-Managed IT
For Businesses That
Already Have An IT Team.
Your internal IT person is good. But they're one person — buried in helpdesk tickets, firefighting outages, managing vendors, and somehow also supposed to be running cybersecurity, planning infrastructure upgrades, and keeping the business compliant. They're not failing. They're drowning. Dark Raven Labs gives them the backup, the tools, and the expertise to do what you actually hired them for.
One IT Person Can't Do Everything. And You Shouldn't Expect Them To.
Most San Diego businesses between 50 and 250 employees have one or two internal IT people. They're smart, they're dedicated, and they're completely overloaded. The result isn't bad IT — it's incomplete IT. The urgent always beats the important, the strategic work never gets done, and the entire organization's technology depends on one person who hasn't taken a real vacation in three years.
Security Is The First Thing That Gets Deprioritized
Your IT person knows security matters. But when they're resetting passwords, fixing printers, and troubleshooting VPN issues all day, vulnerability scans, patching cycles, and threat monitoring get pushed to "next week" — every week. That's how breaches happen to companies that have IT staff.
One Person Means Zero Redundancy
What happens when your IT person is sick? On vacation? Quits? The answer at most companies is: everything stops until they come back or you find someone new. That's not an IT strategy — it's a single point of failure with a salary attached.
Strategic Projects Never Get Done
Cloud migrations, infrastructure upgrades, compliance implementations, and technology roadmaps sit on the backlog because your IT person is consumed by day-to-day operations. The business grows. The technology doesn't. And the gap gets wider every quarter.
Hiring A Second IT Person Costs More Than Co-Managed
A second IT hire in San Diego costs $85K–$130K in salary, plus benefits, plus training, plus management overhead — and you still only get one more person with one more set of skills. Co-managed IT gives you an entire team of engineers, a SOC, and 24/7 coverage for less than a single hire.
We Handle The Load. Your IT Person Handles The Mission.
Co-managed IT isn't outsourcing. It's augmentation. Your internal IT person keeps their role, their authority, and their relationship with your team. We plug into the gaps they can't cover alone — giving them the bandwidth to focus on the work that actually moves your business forward.
What Your IT Person Focuses On
What Dark Raven Labs Handles
Everything Your IT Person Needs But Can't Do Alone.
24/7 Monitoring & Alerting
Every server, workstation, switch, firewall, and cloud service monitored around the clock. We catch issues at 2 AM so your IT person doesn't have to sleep with their phone on the pillow. Escalation protocols customized to your team's preferences.
Helpdesk Overflow
When your IT person has 15 tickets in the queue and a server migration to finish, we absorb the routine tickets — password resets, printer issues, connectivity problems, software installs — so they can focus on the work that matters.
RavenWatch Cybersecurity
Full SOC integration: SIEM monitoring, endpoint detection, vulnerability scanning, email security, phishing simulation, and incident response. This is the capability your IT person knows they need but doesn't have the bandwidth or tooling to deliver.
Patching & Maintenance
OS patches, firmware updates, driver management, and third-party application updates — tested, staged, and deployed on a schedule your IT person approves. No more "we'll get to it next week" on critical patches.
Backup & Disaster Recovery
Managed BDR with encrypted backups, offsite replication, and quarterly failover testing. We own the backup infrastructure so your IT person knows — with documented proof — that recovery works before they need it.
Vendor Management
ISP outages, cloud vendor escalations, hardware warranties, licensing renewals — we coordinate with every vendor so your IT person stops spending half their day on hold with support lines that aren't their job.
Second Hire vs. Co-Managed IT.
Questions From IT Managers & Business Owners.
Want to talk it through?
Schedule A Co-Managed IT Assessment →Will my IT person feel threatened by this?
This is the most common concern — and the most important one to get right. We design every co-managed engagement around empowering your IT person, not replacing them. They keep their role, their authority, and their relationship with your team. We handle the work they don't have time for — monitoring, patching, security, vendor calls — so they can finally focus on the strategic projects that have been sitting on the backlog for months. Most internal IT staff love co-managed because it gives them the tools and backup they've been asking for.
How do we decide who handles what?
During onboarding, we sit down with your IT person and define a responsibility matrix together. They tell us what they want to keep, what they want to hand off, and where they need backup. Common splits: they own applications and projects, we own infrastructure monitoring, security, patching, and helpdesk overflow. But every engagement is customized — because every internal IT team has different strengths and different gaps.
Does my IT person get access to your tools and dashboards?
Yes — full access. They see everything we see: monitoring dashboards, ticket queues, security alerts, patch status, backup reports, and asset inventory. We don't operate in a black box. Your IT person is part of the team, and they have the same visibility into your environment that our engineers do. Most internal IT staff tell us our toolset is better than what they had access to before.
What happens if our IT person leaves?
This is one of the biggest advantages of co-managed IT. Because we already know your environment — your network, your applications, your security posture, your vendor relationships — there's no catastrophic knowledge loss. We maintain full operations while you search for a replacement. And when the new hire starts, we onboard them into the environment with complete documentation. No gap. No scramble.
Is co-managed IT cheaper than hiring a second person?
Significantly. A second IT hire in San Diego runs $85K–$130K in salary alone, plus benefits, training, management overhead, and they still only cover business hours with one person's skill set. Co-managed IT gives you an entire team — network engineers, security analysts, cloud specialists, and helpdesk technicians — with 24/7 coverage, for less than the fully loaded cost of a single additional hire.
How much does co-managed IT cost?
Co-managed IT is priced based on the scope of services, number of endpoints, and level of coverage your organization needs. Typical engagements range from $2,000 to $6,000 per month depending on environment size and which services are included. We provide detailed pricing after a free co-managed IT assessment where we review your current setup and build a scope with your IT person directly.
Your IT Person Deserves
Backup. Not A Pink Slip.
We'll sit down with you and your IT person, review your environment together, and show you exactly where co-managed support makes sense — at no cost, with zero pressure, and with your IT person's input at every step.