Managed IT Services for New Zealand Business
Your whole environment looked after by one team for one monthly figure. Unlimited support, monitoring that runs around the clock, and most problems dealt with before anybody reports them.
Supporting New Zealand businesses since 1989
What are managed IT services?
Managed IT services means handing responsibility for your technology to an outside team who look after it continuously for a fixed monthly fee, rather than calling someone each time something breaks. They monitor it, maintain it, secure it, support the people using it, and carry the responsibility for keeping it running.
In practice that covers the helpdesk your staff ring, the monitoring that watches servers and devices, the patching, the backups, the security controls, and someone keeping track of what needs replacing next year. The terms move around. Managed IT services, managed IT support, outsourced IT and IT support services all describe much the same arrangement. The company delivering it is usually called a managed service provider, or MSP.
With break-fix IT support, problems get reported by the person who cannot work
The usual arrangement is that something breaks, somebody notices, and a ticket gets raised. By the time anyone technical knows about it, the cost has already been paid in lost time.
A disk that has been failing for three weeks. A backup that has been erroring quietly since March. A server steadily running out of space. All of them announce themselves at the least convenient moment, and all of them were visible well before that to anyone who was watching.
The question is not how quickly your provider answers the phone. It is how many of those calls should never have needed making.
What is covered
What a managed IT service actually includes
Six things, priced as one figure rather than six.
Unlimited helpdesk
Your staff ring or email as often as they need to, with nobody counting. That matters more than it sounds, because when people hesitate over whether an issue is worth logging, the small ones go unreported until they are large. See outsourced IT helpdesk.
Proactive monitoring, 24/7
Servers, devices and network watched continuously, with alerts on disk space, failed backups, hardware health and unusual behaviour. Most of what this catches gets fixed before anyone in your office knows there was anything to catch.
Patching and maintenance
Operating systems, applications and firmware updated on a schedule, so security fixes land promptly rather than whenever somebody gets to it. Machines quietly a year behind on updates are the most common thing we inherit.
Backup and recovery
Backups run, monitored, and restore-tested, because a backup nobody has ever tried to restore is an assumption rather than a protection. See backup as a service.
Security as part of it
Endpoint protection, email filtering, access control and patching are included rather than sold separately, because security that sits apart from whoever runs the environment creates seams. See cyber security services.
Somebody thinking ahead
What is ageing, what is out of support, what needs budgeting for and when. A regular review rather than a surprise. See IT consulting and vCIO services.
How the models differ
Break-fix, managed, or alongside your own team
Three arrangements. Which one fits depends on whether you have anybody in-house and what an hour of everyone waiting actually costs you.
Break-fix
You call someone when something goes wrong and pay for the time it takes.
- Suits very small businesses with simple setups
Managed
One monthly figure covering support, monitoring, maintenance and security.
- Suits businesses with no in-house IT, where downtime means work stopping
Co-managed
We work alongside your IT person or team rather than replacing them.
- Suits businesses with internal people who need cover, tooling and specialist depth
The honest version: if you are a handful of people with a laptop each and nothing critical running on site, break-fix may genuinely cost you less. Past that point the arithmetic usually turns, and it turns fastest for businesses that cannot trade when the system is down.
Support in practice
What happens when you log a job
Work is triaged by what it is blocking, not by the order it arrived in. A printer that nobody needs until Thursday does not sit in front of a site that cannot trade.
- A site down or a security incident goes straight to the top and is picked up immediately, including outside business hours.
- One person unable to work is treated as urgent, because from where they are sitting it is total.
- Requests that are not blocking anyone, new starters, software installs, changes, are scheduled rather than dropped in front of something more serious.
- Anything the monitoring raises is worked without a ticket from you at all, which over a year is where most of the volume goes.
Response times are set out in a service level agreement, or SLA, agreed with you rather than advertised here. What is reasonable for a five person office and a fifty person one are not the same number, and we would rather commit to an SLA that fits your business than publish a figure that flatters us.
Cost
What do managed IT services cost in New Zealand?
Managed IT is a fixed monthly fee, quoted as one figure that covers the lot. No per-incident billing, and no separate invoice every time somebody rings.
The assessment
A look at what you are running, what state it is in, and what it would take to support properly. Fixed fee, quoted before it starts, and worth having even if you go no further. See IT assessment.
The monthly figure
One monthly rate covering helpdesk, monitoring, patching, backup and the security controls. It moves when your headcount moves, and not otherwise.
What moves the number:
- How many people, since that is the unit everything is priced on
- What state the environment is in to begin with, because inherited problems have to be put right before they can be maintained
- How many servers you still run on site, which take more looking after than the equivalent cloud services
- What you are already paying for, since most businesses own parts of this twice without knowing
- Whether you have any in-house IT, which changes the shape of the service rather than just the rate
Worth saying plainly: a lower monthly rate usually means fewer inclusions rather than better value. The number to compare is not the rate on the proposal, it is that rate plus everything you were billed on top of it last year.
The process
How moving to us works
Find out what you actually have
An assessment of the environment, what is supported, what is out of warranty, and what nobody has looked at in a while. This is also where you find out what a managed service would cost for your business rather than in general.
Write it all down before anything changes
How the network is built, where the accounts and licences live, what depends on what. Most transitions go badly because this step was skipped and something turned out to be held together by one person’s memory. See IT documentation.
Take over the monitoring and the helpdesk
Agents deployed, alerting live, and your staff given one number and one address. From this point problems start arriving at us rather than at you. See how to switch IT providers.
Fix what the assessment found
In priority order, agreed with you first. Some of it is same-week, some of it belongs in next year’s budget, and we will tell you which is which rather than quoting the lot at once.
Then it becomes routine
Patching on schedule, backups tested, and a regular review of what is coming up. The aim is that the service becomes uneventful, which is the point of paying for it.
One team for the whole thing
- We run the whole environment. Support, security, cloud and phones from the same team, so there is no gap between two providers for a problem to sit in.
- Fixed monthly fee. You can budget it, and it does not move because you had a difficult month.
- Monitoring is part of it, not an upgrade. The watching is where most of the value is, and a quote without it is cheaper for a reason.
- We will tell you what to stop paying for. Overlapping licences and forgotten subscriptions are common, and finding them is part of the assessment.
- Local teams. Christchurch and Dunedin, reachable by people who already know how your environment is built.
- Since 1989. More than 35 years of New Zealand business technology, through several complete changes of what that means.
Go deeper
The detail behind each of these
Everything above is covered at length elsewhere on the site. Start wherever your question sits.
The support itself
How it is arranged
Where we work
Managed IT in Christchurch and Dunedin
People you can get hold of
Teams based in Christchurch since 2009 and Dunedin since 1989. When something needs somebody on site, somebody comes, rather than the problem being handed to whoever is free in another city. See IT support Christchurch and IT support Dunedin. If you are weighing up providers, we have written up what to compare in IT companies Christchurch and IT companies Dunedin.
Nationwide remotely
For businesses elsewhere in New Zealand the helpdesk, monitoring and management all work the same remotely. Site visits where the work genuinely needs hands on the equipment.
Questions
Managed IT services FAQs
What do managed IT services cost in New Zealand?
Managed IT is a fixed monthly fee, quoted as a single figure covering helpdesk, monitoring, patching, backup and security. There is a fixed-fee assessment at the start if you want to know where you stand before committing. What moves the number is headcount, the state of the environment to begin with, how many servers you still run on site, what you are already paying for elsewhere, and whether you have any in-house IT. A lower rate usually means fewer inclusions rather than better value.
What is a managed service provider (MSP)?
A managed service provider, or MSP, is a company that takes ongoing responsibility for another business’s technology for a recurring fee, rather than being called in job by job. An MSP runs your helpdesk, monitors your systems, handles patching and backups, and keeps the security controls current. Managed IT services is the service. An MSP is who delivers it. Exodesk has worked this way with New Zealand businesses since 1989.
What is the difference between managed IT services and break-fix support?
Break-fix bills you when something goes wrong. Managed IT covers proactive monitoring, maintenance and support for a fixed monthly fee, with the aim of preventing the problem rather than attending it. The incentives point in opposite directions: a break-fix provider earns more when your systems fail and downtime rises, and a managed provider earns the same either way, so quiet months are the goal rather than a loss.
Is the helpdesk really unlimited?
Yes. Staff ring or email as often as they need to and nobody is counting tickets. That is deliberate rather than generous. Capped support teaches people to put up with small problems, and small problems are cheap to fix and expensive to ignore.
How quickly do you respond to a support request?
Work is triaged by what it is blocking rather than the order it arrived. A site down or a security incident is picked up immediately, including outside business hours. One person unable to work is treated as urgent. Requests that are not blocking anyone are scheduled. Specific response times are set out in a service level agreement, or SLA, agreed with you, because what is right for a five person office and a fifty person one are different numbers.
Do managed IT services include cyber security?
The core controls are included: endpoint protection, email filtering, access control, patching and 24/7 monitoring. Businesses with more exposure or a compliance obligation often add dark web monitoring, staff training and incident response planning on top. See cyber security services.
Can you work alongside our in-house IT staff?
Yes, and it is a common arrangement. Whether you have one person or a small in-house team, nobody covers leave, after hours, and every specialism at once. Co-managed IT gives them tooling, escalation and depth while they keep the relationships and the day-to-day. The thing that makes it work is agreeing who owns what in writing at the start. See co-managed IT.
Do you support remote and hybrid staff?
Yes. Devices are managed the same whether they sit in the office, at home or on a client site, and secure remote access is part of the setup rather than an add-on. See remote work IT.
Can you manage Microsoft 365 and our cloud services?
Yes. Licensing, configuration, security settings and support for Microsoft 365 are a standard part of the service, along with cloud storage and backup. Much of the security capability in Microsoft 365 is either off by default or sits on a tier you may not hold, so configuration is where the value is. See Microsoft 365 for business.
What happens with our existing IT provider?
We document the environment before anything changes, agree a handover date, and take over the monitoring and helpdesk on that date. Most of the risk in switching sits in undocumented access, so that is where the work goes first. It is normal for the outgoing provider to be perfectly reasonable about it. See how to switch IT providers.
How small is too small for managed IT?
There is no hard line, but the arithmetic tends to turn somewhere around five to ten staff, and it turns earlier for businesses that cannot trade when systems are down. Below that, and with nothing critical running on site, break-fix may genuinely cost less. We will say so if that is the answer. See small business IT support.
How do you handle staff starting and leaving?
Tell us before the day rather than on it, and a new starter arrives to a working account, the right access and a configured device. Leavers matter more: accounts get disabled, sessions ended and access removed on the agreed date. Old accounts nobody closed are one of the most common things we find in an assessment.
Not sure what you are currently paying for?
Most businesses are not certain, and the way to find out is to look. Tell us what you are running and we will tell you what shape it is in, what it would cost to support properly, and whether you are better off where you are.
Christchurch 03 343 3124 · Dunedin 03 479 2941 · Nationwide 0800 396 3375
About us
Managed IT from one team in Christchurch & Dunedin
Originally formed in 1989 as Willis White & Co, Exodesk was established in Dunedin by Chris Willis and Andrew White. We expanded to Christchurch in 2009, growing into one of New Zealand’s most established IT providers. Today we deliver managed IT services, cyber security, cloud solutions and business phone systems to businesses across Christchurch, Dunedin and beyond.
Contact us
For an IT assessment or a second opinion on what you are paying for