Evaluating Managed IT in Albuquerque: What Matters Once You Hit 25+ Staff
- Brandon Alsup
- 17 minutes ago
- 8 min read
At 25+ employees, most “IT problems” aren’t really about IT. They’re about operational exposure—uptime, payroll, onboarding, security, compliance, and the time your leadership team burns when technology behaves badly.
We’ve seen a pattern play out in Albuquerque more than once: organizations choose a managed IT provider based on the wrong signal.
They choose the team that promises the fastest helpdesk response (without proof).
They choose the team that sounds confident (a great salesperson).
They choose the slickest proposal (great marketing).
And sometimes they choose the cheapest option—because it feels responsible in the moment, right up until it gets expensive.
But here’s the nuance we always come back to: this is not a simple “cheap bad, expensive good” story.
We’ve seen higher-priced providers that are genuinely mature and operationally strong. We’ve also seen expensive agreements with plenty of polish and not much substance. Paying more doesn’t magically buy competence. The difference is whether you look under the hood and compare the actual service—because managed services contracts can be very nitty gritty, and that’s where the truth lives.
If you’re searching for managed IT in Albuquerque at the 25+ staff stage, you’re usually trying to answer one question:
What actually matters when evaluating a managed IT provider—so we don’t make an expensive mistake?
This article is our best, real-world answer.
A quick Albuquerque reality check
Albuquerque has a real-world constraint many leaders don’t talk about until they feel it: the local tech labor market is tight, and organizations often end up relying on a mix of internal staff, outsourced vendors, and “whoever knows the password.” Add multiple sites, remote work, and aging infrastructure, and the risk compounds fast.
That’s why “managed IT” at 25+ staff isn’t a convenience purchase. It’s an operating model decision.
The balancing act: short-term relief vs long-term cost
In our experience, most organizations begin this search because they need relief.
Not someday. Now.
Tickets are piling up.
Projects aren’t moving.
Everyone’s busy.
Something scary happened (or almost happened).
Leadership wants predictable cost.
Current IT support isn't answering the phone!
And when you’re under pressure, you naturally optimize for short-term comfort:
“Who can start fastest?”
“Who’s cheapest?”
“Who’s telling us exactly what we want to hear?”
We get it. We’ve been in those conversations. After 20+ years in business we've seen just about every situation.
The trap is that the long-term cost of the wrong provider rarely shows up on day one. It shows up later, disguised as a dozen smaller pains: recurring outages, slow onboarding, “mystery” slowness, backups you can’t restore, security posture that looks fine until you have an incident, compliance you thought you were meeting, and internal leaders dragged into meetings they shouldn’t be in.
So the goal isn’t to ignore cost. The goal is to evaluate cost in context:
What are we paying for—and what risks are we still carrying?
The shift that happens at 25+ staff
Most organizations don’t ceremonially “graduate” into managed IT. They drift into it.
At 10 employees, an outage is annoying. At 25–75, it becomes operational drag. People stop trusting systems. Workarounds multiply. IT becomes a background tax on every department.
We hear variations of the same phrases:
“Why does onboarding take so long?”
“Is anyone actually monitoring this?”
“Are our backups real… or just a checkbox?”
“Why are we always reacting?”
“Why does half the office complain the network is slow?”
"Why does it take so long to hear back on a ticket?"
The common thread in those comments is not "price" it’s reliability and trust - or better yet, trust in the reliability of the IT provider.
When managed IT is done well, your organization feels calmer—not because nothing ever goes wrong, but because problems are smaller, rarer, and handled inside a system instead of a scramble.
The evaluation framework: what matters (and how we’d test it)
1) Proactive operations: what they prevent, not what they claim
Every Managed IT Service Provider says they’re proactive.
So the fastest way to cut through marketing is to ask questions that force reality:
“What problems do you typically catch before our staff notices?”
A mature answer sounds like patterns and examples—not slogans.
You may hear things like:
backup jobs failing (the most dangerous kind of failure)
early warning signs of storage/disk issues before a server crash
suspicious login patterns and account anomalies
network issues that show up as “random slowness”
Then ask the question that separates monitoring from management:
“What happens to an alert at 2 a.m.?”
We’re listening for a crisp chain of custody: triage, auto-remediation, escalation, and accountability. If that flow isn’t clear, you might get lots of alerts and not much stability.
2) Security: tools are common—discipline is rare
As your headcount increases, cybersecurity stops being an “IT project” and becomes an everyday hygiene matter.
One thing we’ve learned as an industry: security is not a product you install once. It’s a discipline you run.
So a solid provider should be able to explain their posture in habits and controls:
how endpoints are protected and monitored
how identity is secured (MFA, conditional access, privileged accounts)
how email threats are filtered and investigated
And we’d always include the question many buyers skip:
"How does the MSP access your environment—and how do they secure themselves?"
This isn’t paranoia. Vendor access is part of your attack surface. You want clarity on remote access controls, MFA requirements, privileged access methods, and separation between client environments.
3) The apples-to-apples problem: contracts hide the real comparison
This is the part we wish more buyers understood upfront.
Two providers can both say “managed IT” and mean completely different things.
One agreement might include patching discipline, security monitoring, backup monitoring and restore testing, quarterly reviews, and after-hours escalation.
Another agreement might include helpdesk + basic monitoring, antivirus, and a long list of exclusions where anything meaningful becomes “a project.”
Same label. Different product.
So we recommend comparing scope, not adjectives. Specifically:
what is included vs billed as a project
how security responsibilities are divided (configure, monitor, respond)
what “backup” means in practice (monitoring vs testing vs DR planning)
after-hours reality (who answers, what counts as emergency)
response targets (and how performance is measured and reported)
documentation ownership (who keeps it current, and how often)
4) Onboarding: switching providers is when you learn what you bought
Buying managed IT isn’t like buying software.
It’s more like switching pilots mid-flight.
A serious provider should have a structured onboarding plan (often 30/60/90 days) that includes:
documenting the environment
stabilizing the biggest risks first
validating backup and restore readiness
cleaning up identity and access issues
standardizing user onboarding/offboarding workflows
building the first real roadmap
Here’s the test we’d use:
“Walk us through what your first 30 days typically looks like.”
If the answer is vague, you may be buying optimism instead of a proven transition system.
5) Executive reporting: can they speak to leadership, not just IT?
When IT is truly “managed,” leadership should see the environment more clearly—not less.
Executives don’t need pages of tickets or charts without meaning. They need answers:
What risk did we reduce this month?
What’s trending worse, and why?
What projects are next, and what do they unblock?
What decisions does leadership need to make (and by when)?
If you’re comparing providers, ask for an artifact:
a sample monthly report
a sample quarterly review deck
a sample roadmap snapshot
6) Pricing: the right question isn’t “how much,” it’s “for what?”
Anyone searching managed IT in Albuquerque notices pricing can be all over the map. That’s normal.
What matters is whether you understand what’s included.
So instead of “What do you charge per user?” we prefer:
“What do you take responsibility for—and what stays on us?”
That question tends to reveal the true boundaries of the service—and whether you’re comparing apples to apples.
The questions we’d use to evaluate providers quickly
If you want an evaluation process that doesn’t take weeks, these questions tend to surface the truth fast:
Operations
“What do you typically prevent, and how?”
“What does a normal week of proactive work look like?”
“What happens to an alert after hours?”
Security
“How do you secure remote access into client environments?”
“How do you test backups and restoration readiness?”
Scope
“What’s included vs billed as a project?”
“What are the most common exclusions in your agreement?”
Process
“What does onboarding look like in the first 30/60/90 days?”
“Who do escalations go to at 2 a.m.?”
Leadership
“What do you report monthly that a CFO should care about?”
“How do you build a roadmap tied to budget and risk?”
Compliance
"Do you have references of current customers that needed to meet compliance standards (HIPAA, CMMC)?"
These aren’t trick questions. They’re operational questions.
And operational clarity is exactly what you’re buying.
What you’re actually buying at 25+ staff
In our experience, when managed IT is working well, it feels like fewer surprises:
fewer recurring issues that mysteriously come back
smoother staff onboarding/offboarding
fewer security close calls
more predictable budgeting
clearer visibility for leadership
less executive time spent on technology behaving badly
In one word: calm.
Not because nothing ever goes wrong—but because you’re no longer improvising your relationship with technology.
Managed IT Evaluation Checklist (Copy/Paste)
Use this checklist to compare managed IT providers in Albuquerque “apples to apples.” It’s designed for organizations with 25+ staff where reliability and risk reduction matter as much as day-to-day support.
1) Scope and Responsibilities
What’s included in the monthly fee vs billed as a project?
Who owns patching (servers, endpoints, third-party apps)?
Who owns identity and access management (MFA, privileged accounts, onboarding/offboarding)?
Who owns vendor management (ISP, Microsoft, firewall, backup, security tools)?
2) Proactive Monitoring and After-Hours Reality
What systems are monitored (endpoints, servers, network, cloud services, backups)?
What issues do you typically catch before users notice?
What happens to an alert at 2 a.m.? Who receives it, and what gets escalated?
What counts as an “emergency” after hours (and what doesn’t)?
3) Security Posture
What security controls are standard (EDR, email security, firewall management, vulnerability scanning)?
How do you detect and respond to suspicious activity?
How do you secure your own access into client environments (remote access, MFA, privileged access)?
What’s your incident response process (first hour, first day)?
4) Backup and Recovery
Are backups only monitored, or are restores tested on a schedule?
What is the expected recovery time for critical systems?
Is disaster recovery included, optional, or a separate project?
Where are backups stored and how are they protected from ransomware?
5) Onboarding and Documentation
Do you have a structured 30/60/90-day onboarding plan?
What documentation will you deliver (network map, asset list, admin accounts, vendor list)?
Who keeps documentation current, and how often is it reviewed?
6) Reporting and Executive Visibility
Do you provide a monthly report leadership can understand?
Do you offer quarterly business reviews (QBRs)?
Do reports include risk, trends, and recommendations—not just ticket counts?
Do you provide a 12–24 month roadmap tied to budget and priorities?
7) Proof, Not Promises
Can you share a sample report/QBR/roadmap artifact?
Can you describe a real incident and what you changed afterward?
Can you define your response targets and how you measure performance?
Decision tip: Don’t compare providers by marketing pages or monthly price alone. Compare them by scope, exclusions, operational discipline, and how clearly they take responsibility for outcomes.
Want to pressure-test your current IT agreement?
If you’re not sure whether your contract actually covers what you think it covers, we can review it with you using the same apples-to-apples framework from this article. You’ll leave with a clearer picture of gaps, hidden exclusions, and what “good” looks like for your organization.
Disclaimer
The information contained in this communication is intended for limited use for informational purposes only. It is not considered professional advice, and instead, is general information that may or may not apply to specific situations. Each case is unique and should be evaluated on its own by a professional qualified to provide advice specifically intended to protect your individual situation. Kosh is not liable for improper use of this information.
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