A corporate IT team at capacity
Password resets and device requests consume the people you hired for projects. We take first-line support through our IT service desk.
Co-managed IT: more capacity and depth for your IT team
Co-managed IT is a model in which an outside provider runs defined parts of your IT operation, such as the service desk, security or servers, while your in-house IT team keeps the rest and sets the direction. Arke Technologies delivers it from Johannesburg under one service-level agreement that records who owns what.
What co-managed IT means
Co-managed IT sits between running everything yourself and handing everything over. Your IT team stays in place and keeps its decision rights: architecture, budget, priorities and the relationship with the business. We take the parts you agree to hand us, run them to a written SLA and report on them monthly.
Because accountability is shared, it has to be written down. Every system and every type of ticket has one owner, your team or ours, and the escalation path between the two is agreed before the first ticket arrives. If you would rather we carried the whole operation, see IT outsourcing.
Co-managed IT is part of our managed IT services, delivered by the same team on the same tooling, for enterprise IT departments, public-sector IT units, and schools, universities and TVET colleges across South Africa.
When co-managed IT makes sense
Specialist depth you do not employ
Microsoft 365 hardening, Microsoft Sentinel SIEM, Entra ID governance, Linux server administration and POPIA compliance management are ongoing work for our team across client organisations in South Africa. See cybersecurity services.
Projects on top of daily operations
A Microsoft 365 migration or a Windows Server upgrade goes better when someone else keeps the lights on. We take one; your team takes the other.
Public-sector IT units
Departments, public entities and municipalities often run large estates with small teams. We add capacity within PFMA or MFMA procurement and reporting disciplines. More on public-sector IT.
Schools, universities and TVET colleges
Small IT teams, many accounts and devices, and a peak every term. We add support for Google Workspace for Education, Microsoft 365 Education and learner devices. More on IT for education.
Leave, vacancies and out-of-hours
Cover while a post is vacant or a colleague is away. Out-of-hours and weekend cover is available by agreement and set in your SLA.
Governance and reporting
- A named service lead who works with your IT lead.
- A monthly service review and report: tickets by owner, SLA performance, security, patching, backups and open risks.
- ITIL-aligned practice for incident, request, problem and change management. Background: ITIL and IT service management
- One change-control process for both teams, so changes do not collide.
- Escalation paths and runbooks, documented, kept current and owned by you.
- Evidence for oversight. King IV Principle 12 makes the governing body responsible for technology and information governance; the monthly report gives boards, councils and school governing bodies something concrete to oversee.
Compliance and control of shared access
Two teams with administrator rights is a security question before it is a support one.
- Named access only. Each person has their own account and only the rights their role needs, reviewed at the monthly service review.
- Logged remote sessions. Every session is approved and logged, and everyone with access to your systems is bound by confidentiality and our security controls.
- POPIA. Access controls and audit logging protect personal information; our Information Officer is designated under PAIA and POPIA.
- Public-sector rules. Audit-ready documentation under the PFMA and the MFMA.
- Recognised frameworks. Controls aligned with ISO/IEC 27001, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and CIS Controls.
Procurement fit
- Level 1 B-BBEE contributor (sworn affidavit available on request), which gives buyers 135% procurement recognition.
- Arke Technologies (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2017/386810/07, VAT number 4750287957.
- Company documents, a bank confirmation letter, our CSD supplier number and SARS tax compliance status are available on request.
- Standard bidding documents (SBD forms) completed when a bid requires them.
- Buy through a proposal and SLA, a purchase order, or a response to your tender. Supplier-onboarding details are on our company facts page.
What co-managed IT costs
R180–R400
published managed IT rates per user per month (matnet.co.za, September 2026)
R21,054
average monthly pay for one Johannesburg IT support technician (Indeed, September 2026)
Co-managed IT is priced on the same basis as our fully managed service: per user (seat) per month for the scope we carry, set after an assessment and billed monthly in advance by debit order. Work outside the SLA is quoted per project, and managed IT pricing explains how we build a quote. The price depends on:
which layers we carry: first line, second and third line, one discipline or a project;
the users, devices and servers in scope;
the hours of cover;
specialist work such as security monitoring or cloud administration;
reporting and audit-evidence needs.
Last reviewed: September 2026.
Continuity: scale up, scale down or bring it back in-house
Co-managed IT should make your team stronger, not dependent. Your data, credentials and documentation stay yours throughout, and the runbooks we write are handed over as we go, not at the end.
If your needs grow, the agreement can widen into fully managed IT; if you build the capability in-house, we hand the work back with the documentation to run it. For strategy and budgeting support alongside your IT lead, see IT consulting and virtual CIO.
