Managed IT Services · Chicago

Managed IT Services in Chicago, IL

NetSys is an IT services company that takes over the day-to-day running of IT for Chicago businesses: the help desk, monitoring, security, Microsoft 365, backups, the network and every vendor behind them. We have run IT from our Brooklyn office since 1998; Chicago work is remote and cloud-based, and agreements are month to month.

The short answer

NetSys provides managed IT services in Chicago for companies that want one accountable IT provider: an engineer-staffed help desk, NinjaOne monitoring and patching, ThreatDown managed detection and response, Microsoft 365, Intune and Entra ID administration, restore-tested backups, Meraki or Fortinet firewall management and vendor management, all for a per-user monthly fee. The work is remote and cloud-based. NetSys has no Chicago office and does not send engineers on site; equipment ships preconfigured for your staff or contractor to connect. The help desk is staffed 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central daily, and monitoring and emergency response never stop.

Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.

How managed IT is delivered to Chicago offices

Chicago clients are run from Brooklyn through the same consoles we use for every office. NinjaOne watches each workstation and server and applies patches inside a maintenance window you set in Central time; ThreatDown alerts reach an engineer who can quarantine a device in the Loop or Oak Brook without anyone leaving their desk; Meraki and Fortinet firewalls are managed from their cloud dashboards. NetSys keeps no staff in Chicago and does not send engineers there, so physical work is planned around that fact. Replacement laptops are registered in Windows Autopilot before they ship and build themselves at first sign-in, and a firewall or switch arrives with its configuration loaded for your office manager, building engineer or cabling contractor to connect while we confirm it from the console. Monitoring runs 24/7 from Brooklyn, and so does emergency service. Our staffed help-desk hours are 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time (3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central), seven days a week. The proposal states severe-incident escalation, authorized remediation and any other after-hours work.

An IT company for Chicago firms, from the Loop to O'Hare

Chicago businesses looking for an IT company usually want one firm that can take the whole list: managed IT, IT support, cybersecurity and IT consulting under one agreement, as the entire IT department or alongside an internal IT person. The work changes by district. Trading and investment firms around LaSalle Street and Wacker Drive need market-data connections and order and compliance systems that cannot sit through an outage at the open, plus records an examiner can read. Law firms near the Daley Center and the Dirksen federal courthouse live in a document management system and Illinois's mandatory civil e-filing. Practices around the Illinois Medical District and Streeterville run EHR, imaging and billing systems under HIPAA. Forwarders near O'Hare, which handled about 1.77 million metric tonnes of cargo in the first ten months of 2025, run transportation systems that exchange EDI messages all day.

Chicago buildings, carriers and the vendors we manage

Loop and River North towers usually offer several carriers in the riser, while converted lofts in the West Loop and older suburban office parks may have one cable circuit and a landlord who controls the closet. We map what each address actually has before designing anything. Options to check include Comcast Business, AT&T Business Fiber, Astound Business Solutions (the former RCN) and Zayo, which closed its purchase of Crown Castle's fiber business on May 1, 2026, so fiber once sold under the Crown Castle name now belongs to Zayo. Once the circuits are known, every vendor goes into IT Glue with account numbers, renewal dates and support contacts, and we take the calls: the carrier when a line drops, the phone provider, the copier company and the software vendor whose update broke something. A second circuit or 5G backup goes wherever an hour of downtime costs more than the extra line.

What the first month looks like for a Chicago company

Days one to ten are discovery, done remotely. An engineer meets the person who handles IT now, often an office manager or a controller, deploys the NinjaOne agent, and documents users, devices, licenses, the Microsoft 365 tenant, the firewall, circuits and every vendor contract. By about day twelve you have a written findings report and a costed cutover plan, and you decide what goes ahead. The cutover then happens in stages over a week or two, scheduled around a quarter-end, a trial date or a heavy shipping week: ThreatDown goes onto each device, staff enroll in multifactor sign-in, Keeper replaces the spreadsheet of passwords, Barracuda takes over mail filtering, and the first backup is proved with a real restore. For a 20-seat office, three to four weeks from the first call to a finished cutover is typical.

Chicago risks a managed IT plan is built for

Chicago's outages are rarely exotic. On August 10, 2020, a derecho cut power to more than 800,000 ComEd customers. Flooding from June 29 to July 2, 2023, and again that September, brought two federal disaster declarations covering Cook County, and storms from July 13 to 16, 2024, with at least 33 tornadoes across the Chicago area, brought a third. On January 30, 2019, O'Hare recorded 23 degrees below zero. Managed IT plans for those weeks before they arrive: battery backup that shuts servers and network gear down cleanly, a second internet path, files in SharePoint and OneDrive so people can work from wherever has power, and backups copied out of the region. Each quarter we run a test restore and confirm that staff can sign in and keep working from home if the office goes dark.

What is included

Managed IT Services in Chicago: what NetSys delivers

Help desk and monitoring

Unlimited help desk by phone, email and Teams, staffed by engineers rather than a ticket queue, with severe problems such as ransomware, systems down, no internet or email not working answered immediately by your dedicated engineer
24/7 monitoring of every server, workstation and firewall through NinjaOne RMM, with alerts an engineer acts on rather than forwards

Security, built in

ThreatDown managed detection and response with EDR agents on every device, not just servers
Microsoft Defender for Business, Entra ID Conditional Access and multifactor authentication across the Microsoft 365 tenant

Backups, devices and vendors

Datto SIRIS or Veeam backups with immutable off-site copies, and live restores run on the schedule in the agreement with the result sent to you
Intune and Windows Autopilot device management, so a new laptop ships sealed and configures itself at first sign-in

Published case study

Complete managed IT, cybersecurity and help desk for a 20-seat organization

A 20-seat organization handed NetSys the whole of its IT. Devices, network, Microsoft 365 and vendors came under one agreement with 24/7 monitoring and a named account manager; endpoint protection, multifactor authentication, email protection and tested backups went onto all twenty seats; staff got a help desk with engineers on the other end; and every new hire now goes through a defined onboarding process with recurring phishing training. The write-up is limited to the scope delivered, with no outcome figures claimed.

Read the full case study (20 seats)

From our client work

Managed IT services work for other clients

Retail
Seven-location clothing retail chain
Management of 56 computers, point-of-sale network support, endpoint protection, and standardized Wi-Fi and firewall configurations.
Network & Wi-Fi Management IT for Retail and E-commerce

Client names are withheld. These examples were chosen for the work involved, not for where the client is, so none is presented as a Chicago client.

What managed IT costs in Chicago

Managed IT is priced per user per month for a fully managed agreement, and the number moves with four things more than with headcount: how many servers you run, whether you need after-hours coverage beyond monitoring, how much compliance documentation you carry, and whether we are co-managing alongside an internal person or running everything. We quote from an assessment, not a phone call, and the agreement runs month to month. What belongs in the monthly fee versus what is billed separately is set out on our managed IT pricing page.

How the monthly fee is built

Who this fits, and who it does not

Best fit: 10 to 75 employees, one or two offices plus remote staff, already on Microsoft 365 or ready to move there, and either no internal IT or one person who is underwater.

Managed IT Services in Chicago: FAQs

Is NetSys an IT company that supports businesses in Chicago?

Yes. NetSys is a managed IT services company and managed service provider founded in 1998, and it supports Chicago businesses remotely from its only office, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. One month-to-month agreement can cover managed IT, the help desk, cybersecurity and IT consulting, either as fully outsourced IT or co-managed with your own staff. We support Windows PCs, Macs, Microsoft 365 and the specialist software your firm depends on, and we work problems with that software's vendor directly. If you need a technician in your office every week, a Chicago-based provider is the better fit, and we will say so.

How does managed IT work for Chicago organizations?

Through remote management, security and cloud tools, so the work does not depend on where your office is. Engineers in Brooklyn patch, monitor, change accounts, respond to security alerts and manage firewalls through NinjaOne, ThreatDown, Microsoft 365 and the Meraki or Fortinet dashboards. Chicago is an hour behind us, so the staffed help desk runs from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Central every day, and monitoring and emergency service cover the remaining hours. NetSys does not send engineers to Chicago; new hardware ships ready to use, and your staff or a contractor connects anything physical.

What does managed IT in Chicago include, and how is it priced?

One per-user monthly fee covers the help desk, monitoring and patching, ThreatDown MDR, Microsoft 365, Intune and Entra ID administration, Barracuda email protection, KnowBe4 training, Keeper, restore-tested backups, firewall management, IT Glue documentation and vendor calls. We set the figure after an assessment and do not publish rates. Servers you still run, the number of offices and circuits, compliance documentation for regulators such as the SEC or HHS, and whether an internal IT person stays on move it more than headcount. Hardware, licensing and projects are quoted separately. The only free offer is a remote external penetration test.

What IT services do you offer to businesses in Chicago, IL?

The core is the running of IT: managed services, a help desk staffed by engineers, device and Microsoft 365 administration, patching, backups and vendor management. Security sits on top, with managed detection and response, email filtering, phishing training, vulnerability scanning and incident response, plus network security on Meraki or Fortinet and backup and disaster recovery. Consulting covers projects with an end date, such as Azure and SharePoint migrations, office moves, Windows 11 rollouts and replacing Windows Server 2016 before Microsoft's extended support stops on January 12, 2027. Each service has its own Chicago page.

How does remote onboarding work for businesses in Chicago, IL?

For the company, onboarding is a series of approvals rather than a disruption. We agree a cutover date, install the NinjaOne agent remotely and collect admin access to Microsoft 365, the firewall, the domain registrar and each vendor portal, storing every credential in Keeper. Staff then get two messages: one introducing the help desk, and one scheduling their multifactor enrollment with an engineer available on the phone. The previous provider's tools come off each machine the same day ours go on, so nobody is unprotected in between, and anyone due a new laptop receives it already enrolled.

One provider, month to month

Get the whole of your IT handled by one accountable team.

Tell us how many people and devices you have, what you run today and what keeps breaking. We come back with a written scope, the responsibilities on each side and a monthly figure, before you decide anything.

Explore Managed IT Services Scope 845-203-3914