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Software Insourcing

YEARS 2-5

You own the system. We help you keep it healthy.

Managed Internal Platform Support maintains internally owned systems on a monthly basis: patching, monitoring, dependency updates, small enhancements, and documented operational health - covering the years-two-through-five burden that determines whether an insourcing decision holds up.

FIT AND COMMERCIALS

Match the engagement to the decision in front of you.

The answer to "who maintains it?" - the question that kills most insourcing plans.

BEST FOR
Systems in production with a named internal owner who needs depth behind them, not a replacement.
TIMELINE
Monthly
PRICE RANGE
$3,000-$12,000/month per system tier

USE THIS WHEN

When this service is the right fit.

Use this service when these conditions are present. If the first move is still unclear, start with the Insourcing Readiness Score.

An internally owned system carries real load and its maintenance currently depends on one person's spare capacity.

Dependency updates, patches, and monitoring happen "when someone gets to it."

The build case promised a maintenance cost - and someone should be accountable for keeping it true.

You want insurance against the key-person risk that turns owned systems into stranded systems.

WHAT YOU GET

What your team can use immediately.

Each engagement leaves evidence, a decision, and a plan owners can execute — with the independence that flat-fee pricing protects.

Deliverables

  • Monthly patching and dependency updates, applied and verified on a published cadence.
  • Monitoring and alerting kept current, with response runbooks your team can execute.
  • A small-enhancement lane: the fixes and improvements that otherwise queue forever.
  • Quarterly health review: performance, security posture, dependency risk, and refresh planning.
  • Documentation kept alive as the system changes - not written once and abandoned.
  • An annual honest reckoning: what this system truly costs to own, against what the original case assumed.

Where we hold the line

  • We support your owner; we do not replace them. If the internal owner leaves, the first deliverable is helping you ramp the next one.
  • Systems we did not build get a paid onboarding review first - we do not guarantee an operational floor we have not inspected.
  • The annual cost reckoning reports reality even when it argues against the system we maintain - if a subscription has become the better answer, the review says so.

SAMPLE SITUATIONS

The decision belongs in a workflow, not a pitch.

These examples show the before and after state. The actual engagement is scoped around your contracts, systems, spend, and team.

The quiet decay

Before
Dependencies age, patches queue, and the system slowly becomes the legacy monster everyone feared.
After
Updates land monthly, risk is reviewed quarterly, and the system stays boring - the highest compliment.

The key-person exit

Before
The one engineer who knows the system resigns, and the ownership case collapses with them.
After
Runbooks, documentation, and a support bench mean the departure is a transition, not a crisis.

The maintenance treadmill

Before
The team that built the system now spends its weeks maintaining it instead of building the next thing.
After
The operational floor is covered; internal capacity goes to the roadmap, not the treadmill.

HOW WE WORK

Evidence first. Decision second. Independence always.

The cadence is deliberately practical: scope, gather the evidence, run the math, and hand back a decision your team can defend.

  1. 01

    Onboarding review: architecture, dependencies, monitoring, documentation, and the gaps priced honestly.

  2. 02

    Monthly: the patching and update cadence, the enhancement lane, and monitoring kept true.

  3. 03

    Quarterly: the health review with your owner - risk, performance, and the next quarter's priorities.

  4. 04

    Annually: the cost reckoning - what ownership actually cost this year, in writing.

RELATED INTELLIGENCE

Operating analysis for practical spend decisions.

These articles cover technical debt, migration risk, unit economics, and financial infrastructure in more depth.

FAQ

Questions leaders usually ask.

Isn't this just outsourcing again?

No - the ownership stays with you: your code, your infrastructure, your roadmap, your named owner. This covers the operational floor beneath them. The dependency this creates is deliberately shallow: documented systems, published runbooks, and an exit path that is a handoff, not a hostage negotiation.

Why does an insourcing advisor sell maintenance?

Because the maintenance burden is the most common reason insourcing fails, and an advisor who recommends ownership without an answer for years two through five is selling half a decision. This tier exists so the build recommendation is honest - and it is priced flat, not as a percentage of anything.

Will you support a system another team built?

Yes, after an onboarding review that inspects what we would be guaranteeing. Stalled or half-finished builds usually route through a short hardening sprint first, then land here for the long run.

What does the annual cost reckoning cover?

Everything ownership actually cost that year: our fee, internal time, infrastructure, and refresh reserve - compared against the original decision case and the current subscription market. If owning has stopped making sense, the reckoning says so, even though that recommendation ends our engagement.

Ready to scope this engagement?

Use a triage call to confirm whether this is the right first move — or whether a readiness score or a renewal audit should come first.

Cover the maintenance