Hands-off IT in Montreal: run the shop without hiring a department

Hands-off IT is for companies that should not hire an IT department yet still have laptops, identities, printers, and a Monday morning when mail dies. It is a desk: tickets, devices, accounts, backups. You sell. We keep the lights on.

It is not a rebrand of a four-logo MSP catalogue. If you already have people with admin rights, you want the IT bench — they keep the keys, we take overflow. If the “IT person” is the founder’s nephew and a pile of passwords in a browser, you are in this article.

What we actually run

Day-to-day, not a slide titled Transform:

• Identity: joiners, leavers, MFA enrollment (see alerting and hardening)
• Devices: a laptop standard you can reorder, not seven mystery models
• Mail and files in the tenant you already have — often Microsoft 365
• Tickets a human answers in Montreal hours (weekdays, 9–17 ET)
• Backups restored on a schedule, not only configured
• Vendors: the printer lease, the domain registrar, the host for the site

We do not pretend to be your vCISO, your law firm, and your MSP in one invoice on week one. Scope is written.

What we will not take off you

You keep:

• The Microsoft (or Google) tenant
• Registrar and DNS
• Billing for SaaS you chose
• The right to export

If a provider will not work without becoming the owner of your tenant, that is a hostage contract. AERVIO will not sign that as the customer, and we will not ask you to.

Tickets without a robot

A ticket that only exists to close an SLA timer is worse than a Slack DM. Our default is: one mailbox or form, a named owner, a same-business-day first response during 9–17 ET. After-hours is an explicit line item, not an icon of a moon.

Users get a short page: how to ask for access, how to report a lost laptop, how to request software. If that page does not exist, you do not have a desk. You have folklore.

Devices: boring on purpose

A standard image, disk encryption, a person who can wipe a lost Mac, and a spare charger in a drawer in Montreal if you are local. We would rather you buy the same three machines for two years than “optimize TCO” with a new OEM every quarter.

BYOD is allowed when it is written (what we can wipe, what we cannot see). It is not allowed as a shrug.

How this sits next to the product

AERVIO is a software studio first. Hands-off IT exists because a site + CRM + search on a tenant nobody can recover is theatre. The same people who know how your form posts should know how your DNS is logged. That is an opinionated overlap, not a coincidence.

We are not the cheapest labour arbitrage helpdesk. We are the desk that already understands your stack.

A starter slice

Week 1: inventory of domains, tenants, laptops, and who thinks they are admin. Week 2: MFA everywhere it should be, backup restore test, ticket path. Week 3: leavers process (the one that actually kills the mailbox). Then a monthly restore and a quarterly access review.

Pricing is a written retainer, not a surprise after a “quick look.” Call +1 438-498-3913 or write hello@aervio.io with how many humans and which tenant you are in. That is enough for a first proposal.

A Monday that used to eat the founder

Mail is down. Nobody knows if it is DNS, a licence, or a laptop. The founder Googles. Two hours later a forum said “flush DNS.” That is the company that needs a desk.

After Hands-off IT, the same Monday is: a ticket, a named person in ET, a status in one sentence, mail back, a note in the log. Dull. Billable. Preferable to folklore.

We keep a short “when mail dies” runbook: DNS, tenant status, licence, device. Users never see the whole thing. They see one path to ask.

Printers, Wi-Fi, and other unglamorous objects

Yes, we will talk to the printer vendor. Yes, we will label the Wi-Fi that guests should use. No, we will not design a campus network for a 200-person plant on a starter retainer. Scope is honest. If you have a warehouse scanner that only speaks an old Windows driver, that is a project line, not “IT included.”

Onboarding a person without a ceremony

Joiner: account, MFA, laptop standard, the ticket page, the folder they actually need — not every SharePoint site since 2016. Leaver: same-day kill, forwarding only if you asked in writing, device back or remote wipe. The 365 workplace article is the identity half. This article is who you call when that fails at 10:12.

Headcount and tenant name remain the brief.

Questions

Is this the same as managed IT services?

The job overlap exists industry-wide. We do not sell a two-card managed / co-managed hub. Hands-off IT is for companies with no internal hire. If you already have admins, that is the IT bench.

Do you take our Microsoft tenant?

No. You keep admin. We work inside it with named accounts and a restore test you have seen.

What are the hours?

Weekdays 9–17 ET from Montreal, unless a written after-hours slice is in the proposal. We do not pretend to be a 24/7 SOC on a starter retainer.