OKTO console What it is
OKTO Solutions runs your IT equipment day to day, from answering employees to planning hardware replacements. One address, one invoice, one party accountable for the result.
Managed IT services
Managed IT services for SMBs in Quebec: outsourced IT support and management
Hand your IT over to a team that runs all of it: help desk support for your people, monitoring of workstations and servers, cybersecurity, backups and maintenance. OKTO Solutions becomes your IT department, with one point of contact and a monthly plan you know in advance.
Managed IT services means outsourcing a small business’s IT to an outside provider that becomes its IT department for a monthly plan. The provider covers employee support, monitoring of workstations and servers, cybersecurity, backups, patching and hardware replacement planning. The model is also called IT outsourcing, and the provider a managed service provider, or MSP.
In short
Managed IT services in three points
Managed IT services means outsourcing your IT to a provider that becomes your IT department in exchange for a monthly plan. The same arrangement goes by other names: IT outsourcing, managed services, or simply working with an MSP.
Who it is for
Quebec SMBs with no internal IT team, or where the person in charge of IT already holds another full-time job. Our managed plans start at five workstations.
What changes
Problems get caught before your staff notice them, patches go on without anyone chasing us for them, and your IT budget becomes predictable from one month to the next.
What the service covers
What is included in managed IT services?
A managed IT services plan covers the full operation of a small business fleet: helping users, watching the equipment, security, backups, the network and licence tracking. Nothing in the list below is billed by the hour, and nothing waits for an employee to complain first. The list is the same from one client to the next; what varies is the number of workstations, the number of servers and the plan level chosen. Work that falls outside that scope, a migration project for instance, is quoted separately before anyone starts it. That distinction matters at budget time, because it is the difference between a line you can forecast and a bill that shows up when you least want it.
- User support, remote and on site
- Account and access management, employee arrivals and departures
- Continuous proactive monitoring of workstations and servers
- Patch management for Windows and third-party applications
- Advanced EDR-class antivirus protection, managed and monitored
- Multifactor authentication and access hardening
- Central backup of workstations, servers and cloud data
- Restore testing to prove the backups can actually be used
- Administration of the firewall, the internal network and the wireless network
- Mobile device management and personal device policies
- Fleet inventory, licence tracking and equipment life cycle
- Monthly report and a recurring review meeting
How it works
What does a week with an MSP actually look like?
That is the question we get most often once the ink is dry. The tools are installed, and then what really happens? The answer comes down to four loops running side by side. A reactive loop, when an employee writes in. An automatic loop, when an agent spots something out of line and fixes it before the phone rings. A scheduled loop, for patches, restore tests and upkeep. And a step-back loop, once a month, to look at what keeps coming back and decide to fix it at the source instead of patching the symptom again. Most of the value shows up in that last one.
When an employee writes in
The request becomes a ticket, it is sorted by real impact, a technician calls back and takes control of the workstation with the person’s consent. Then the technician explains what happened, in plain language.
When nothing seems to be happening
A failing disk, a failed backup, a server running out of space, a patch falling behind: the alert lands with us, usually before anyone on your side notices a thing.
What is scheduled
Windows and third-party patches, server upkeep, restore tests, access reviews, licence checks and a look at the equipment coming up on end of life.
The monthly step back
A report on the state of the fleet: patches applied, incidents handled, backups verified, equipment due for replacement. Then a meeting to set the priorities for the quarter.
The tools are ours. Monitoring runs on OKTO RMM and your requests are tracked in OKTO PSA, two platforms our own team builds. We do not resell someone else’s product: we publish it, which means we can change a behaviour or add a check when a client genuinely needs one, instead of waiting on a foreign vendor’s roadmap.
The point of contact
How do your employees reach us day to day?
Four doors, one queue: the OKTO button that sits in the notification area of every managed workstation, the client portal, the support email address and the phone. The button and the portal are the two that save real time, because nothing has to be looked up before writing.
The button opens a short menu. The employee describes the problem in one sentence and the ticket leaves with the machine and its diagnostics. The same menu shows the state of the workstation, installs an approved application without administrator rights, and runs pending updates at a moment that suits the person. The portal is aimed at whoever coordinates: open requests, the history of past work, documents handed over. Email and the phone at 450 231-3836 land in the same queue.
What happens to the ticket after that, from triage to the closing note, is set out on the IT support page.
The comparison
With OKTO or with no IT partner: what really changes
Plenty of SMBs do not have a bad provider. They have none at all. IT is carried by the handiest person in the office plus a repair shop somebody calls when things break. Here is what that looks like, line by line.
| Day to day | With OKTO managed IT services | With no IT partner |
|---|---|---|
| An employee is stuck | One number, one ticket, a pickup target based on impact | Someone hunts for who to call, then waits for a callback |
| A failure is building | The alert fires before the outage and the fix is scheduled | You find out the morning nothing works any more |
| Security patches | Applied continuously on Windows and on third-party applications | Applied whenever a workstation reboots, or never on the servers |
| Backups | Centralized, monitored and tested with a real restore | Set up once, never checked since |
| Documentation | Environment documented and handed over, named accounts you can trace | In one person’s head, or with a former provider |
| The invoice | A monthly amount known in advance, easy to budget | Unpredictable, and the biggest one lands on the worst day |
| Equipment replacement | Planned in a roadmap, spread out over time | Taken all at once after a failure, usually as an emergency |
| Proof of security for an insurer or a client | Reports, logging and policies available on request | The questionnaire stays in the corner of the desk |
The monthly model also lines up the incentives. A provider paid by the month has nothing to gain by letting a problem drag on when it will be back next week.
Onboarding
The first 90 days, step by step
The transition runs in three stages over roughly 90 days, without interrupting your operations. At each stage you know what has been taken over, in what order, and what is still on the list to fix.
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Weeks 1 to 3: discovery and kickoff
We audit your infrastructure and your security posture, meet your decision makers and go through the systems in place: workstations, servers, network, licences, backups, access. The transition is planned with you and lined up with your business priorities. By the end of this stage you have a written picture of your environment and a ranked list of what needs fixing.
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Weeks 3 to 8: deployment
We install the management and monitoring tools on your equipment, put the security pieces in place, document your environment and apply the first round of improvements. Support shifts over to our team in stages, so your employees never hit a gap in service.
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Weeks 8 to 12: strategic review
We measure what was accomplished, confirm you are satisfied, then produce the IT master plan and its roadmap. From there the service settles into its normal rhythm: continuous monitoring, patching, monthly reports and review meetings.
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If you are leaving another provider
We inventory what the outgoing provider holds: administrator access, domain names, licences, contracts, documentation and backups. We take those back one by one, stand our tools up in parallel, then switch support over once everything is in hand. Recovering the access is the make-or-break piece; that is where transitions get stuck.
Our service targets
How quickly is a request picked up?
Every request is classified by its impact on your organization. An outage that stops production does not travel the same road as a question about page layout. Here is what we aim for, from first contact through to back to normal.
| Priority | What is happening | Pickup | Resolution target |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | Everything is down: server or site out of service, ransomware | 15 minutes | 4 hours |
| P2 | A group is blocked, a service is degraded | 1 hour | 8 business hours |
| P3 | One user is blocked | 4 hours | 1 business day |
| P4 | A request or a question | 8 hours | 3 business days |
Resolution targets are objectives, not guarantees. Under the Complet plan they become a contractual commitment written into the service level agreement, together with 24/7 emergency service. On the phone, we answer in under 2 minutes. Regular support runs Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern. The emergency line is for outages that stop the business: a password forgotten at 2 a.m. is not an emergency.
The plans
Base, Standard and Complet at a glance
The offer comes in three plans that step up in tiers, and each one contains the previous. The vCIO module sits on top when management wants a longer view. The plan names stay in French because that is how they appear in your agreement.
The safety net
Base
Proactive monitoring, basic cyberdefence and essential cloud backup. No user support: this is a safety net, not a help desk.
The common choice
Standard
Adds user support, workstation and server maintenance, backups verified by a twice-yearly restore test, and a quarterly review of operations.
Full coverage
Complet
Adds advanced cybersecurity with managed detection and central logging, 24/7 emergency service, a guaranteed service level agreement, vulnerability management and the IT master plan with its roadmap.
The vCIO module attaches to the main plan at three levels: Essentiel, Standard and Stratégique. It brings the master plan, strategic meetings, budget planning and phishing simulations run with your employees. The full breakdown sits on the plans and pricing page, and the way we scope a mandate is spelled out in how we build a quote.
Who it is for
Which companies are managed IT services meant for?
Managed IT services are built for Quebec SMBs that depend on their technology every single day but have neither the volume nor the budget to staff a full IT team in house. In practice, the call almost always comes after one of these six situations.
- The person who knows computers already has another full-time job and cannot keep up.
- The current provider answers late, documents nothing and never flags a problem before the outage.
- An outage, a data loss or an attempted fraud has just proven there was no safety net.
If you already have an internal IT resource, look at our co-managed IT services instead, which keep that person in place. If the trigger is mainly protection against attacks, start with managed cybersecurity for small business.
- The company opens an office, hires quickly or adds remote work, and the fleet grows faster than anyone can manage it.
- An insurer, a client or a prime contractor wants proof: multifactor authentication, tested backups, logging.
- Workstations and servers are reaching end of life and nobody is planning their replacement.
You are no longer riding on one person who goes on vacation or changes jobs. OKTO Solutions was founded in 2025 by a team that has supported more than 100 organizations over more than 15 years, and the company is a Microsoft Partner.
Where we work
Where we take IT fleets on
The office is in Trois-Rivières and the work is done remotely across Quebec, with scheduled visits whenever being on site is the right answer. We support organizations in Quebec City, Lévis, Laval, Lavaltrie, Mont-Tremblant, Rouyn-Noranda and Baie-Comeau.
Questions and answers
Questions about managed IT services
What are managed IT services?
It is a model where an outside provider takes charge of your entire IT operation for a monthly plan: user support, monitoring, security, backups, maintenance and planning. The same thing is called IT outsourcing, or working with a managed service provider, shortened to MSP. You no longer have an IT team to recruit or replace.
What is the difference between managed IT services and co-managed IT?
Under managed services, OKTO Solutions takes everything on. Under co-managed IT, your internal person stays in place and we cover what they do not have the time, the tools or the expertise to do: round-the-clock monitoring, advanced security, projects, vacation coverage. The dividing line is set with you and written down before day one.
How long does it take to switch to a new IT provider?
Roughly 90 days: discovery and kickoff in weeks 1 to 3, deployment in weeks 3 to 8, strategic review in weeks 8 to 12. Support shifts over to our team in stages, so your operations never stop during the transition. The real duration depends on how many sites you have and on how cooperative the outgoing provider is.
How fast do you respond when an employee has a problem?
Requests are ranked by impact, because one stuck workstation and a server that halts an entire team do not follow the same path. We aim to pick up a request within 15 minutes when the organization is down, 1 hour when a group is blocked, 4 hours for a single user and 8 hours for a routine request. On the phone, we answer in under 2 minutes. These are targets we work to; under the Complet plan they are guaranteed by the service level agreement.
Is user support included in every plan?
No. The Base plan covers monitoring, basic cyberdefence and essential cloud backup, with no user support: it is a safety net. User support starts with the Standard plan. The full breakdown is on the plans page.
Do we keep ownership of our licences, accounts and data?
Yes. Your subscriptions, your domain names, your administrator accounts and your data stay in your name. The documentation of your environment is handed over to you. If you ever change provider, you leave with everything.
Do we have to replace our equipment to become a client?
No. We start by auditing what you already have. Replacements are proposed based on the age, the performance and the risk of each piece of equipment, then scheduled in the roadmap so they are spread out over time instead of landing all at once after a failure.
We look at your environment before proposing anything
Twenty minutes is enough to know whether we are the right partner. We tell you what we would take on, what has to be fixed first and in what order. No strings attached.