Pittsburgh Remote Workforce Connectivity Consulting and Support

Enlarging your telecommuter workforce can have a significant impact on network infrastructure, security/compliance, and corporate culture. Progent has 20 years of experience helping businesses of all sizes to plan, deploy, manage, tune, and troubleshoot IT networks that incorporate a remote workforce. Progent can help your Pittsburgh organization to select the appropriate tools and follow leading practices in building and operating a secure virtual ecosystem for telecommuters that promotes teamwork and delivers maximum business value. Progent offers services that go from as-needed guidance for helping you past occasional IT bottlenecks to comprehensive project management or co-management to help you successfully complete business-critical tasks.

Progent's consultants can help Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania businesses to with any facet of building a high-functioning remote work ecosystem by providing network infrastructure design and configuration services, VoIP PBX troubleshooting, video conferencing support, collaboration platform customization and training, public cloud connectivity, helpdesk services, security monitoring, data protection solutions, and streamlined management.

Network Infrastructure for an At-Home Workforce
Setting up the network infrastructure required for a remote work environment can be especially complex if you have to manage a combination of worker-owned equipment like PCs and notebooks, routers, and wireless APs from various manufacturers and with a mix of OS software and firmware levels. Progent's experience delivering remote help for both outdated as well as current technologies in remote office venues enables you to make efficient use of your available network infrastructure and offers fast access to top-tire consultants for implement necessary upgrades. Support services offered by Progent to assist you to create a productive telecommuting infrastructure include:

• VPN technology makes it possible to establish a secure tunnel for authenticated at-home employees to use IT assets situated at your corporate datacenter or in a public cloud. Progent's consultants can help you to configure and maintain VPN access between your at-home workforce and your key IT resources by providing remote VPN configuration consulting. For businesses using Cisco's ASA security appliances, Progent's Cisco ASA Firewall consultants can help your at-home workers to set up Cisco's popular AnyConnect software for secure VPN tunneling for a broad range of endpoint devices such as Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, and Android.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure products allow a teleworker to see and use a remote PC's desktop. This technology gives network managers more control over the computing environment of telecommuters and ensures them a familiar experience. Progent's VDI services include Windows Remote Desktop integration and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI solutions.
• Routers connect at-home networks to the Internet and typically support VPN tunnels, home Wi-Fi connectivity, and firewalls. Progent offers top-tier online support for integrating home routers from all major vendors. See router configuration support from Cisco-certified consultants.
• Home Wireless networks, typically shared by the whole family and visitors, are commonly used by at-home employees to connect to their router for work. This can create performance as well as cybersecurity problems. Progent can assist you to resolve these issues by providing services like Cisco Aironet integration consulting, Cisco-certified Meraki WiFi installation consulting, and Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi access point integration help.
• Internet access solutions impact the speed and reliability of connections between telecommuters and the corporate network. Mission-critical processes might demand backup Internet connections in case the normal connection breaks. Progent can provide guidance for picking ISPs, selecting sensible bandwidth and data volume offerings, and integrating fault-tolerant Internet connections. Refer to Internet connectivity integration services.

VoIP Solutions for Teleworkers
Expanding the company PBX system to accommodate telecommuters is critical to maintaining an effective at-home workforce. A variety of cloud-centric VoIP products are used by SMBs to support telecommuters. Many enterprises depend on Cisco's modern or older platforms for IP voice solutions. Progent can help businesses of any size to design or maintain a remote VoIP environment that provides the flexibility, convenience and security needed for remote users. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice consultants offer high-level support to assist businesses optimize their current Cisco IP voice environments to support a growing remote workforce.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) delivers advanced telephony capabilities to devices like IP phones, media processing platforms, Voice over IP gateways, and multimedia applications used across the network. Unified Communications Manager manages additional mixed media services such as messaging, video conferencing, and team interaction networks. For details about Progent's Unified Communications Manager support, refer to Cisco Unified CM consulting services.
• CallManager is Cisco's earlier call-processing agent and has been replaced by CUCM. Progent's consultants can assist your company to maintain your current CallManager deployment or migrate efficiently to Cisco's modern IP telephony products. To learn about Progent's expertise for Cisco CallManager and Cisco's other older VoIP platforms, visit CallManager consulting.
• Cisco IP Gateways provide integration with public telephony networks and with users working beyond the corporate firewall such as at-home workers. Progent offers expert support for Cisco's earlier generation IP gateways like the UC520, UC540 and UC560 series as well as for modern Cisco SIP gateways. See Cisco SIP gateway integration consulting.
• Additional VoIP Platforms supported by Progent's consultants include Vonage, RingCentral and 8x8. Progent can help you to update your wide area network architecture to work with these solutions and deliver online configuration and debugging expertise.

Voice/Video Conferencing for Remote Workers
A wide selection of voice/video conferencing platforms from major technology companies support virtual discussions, video and voice conferencing, chat, and content sharing for both local users and teleworkers. Many organizations utilize multiple conferencing products to accommodate their different partners and customers. Progent can help you to manage your existing voice/video conferencing environment and optimize the experience of your remote workforce.

• Skype for Business is Microsoft's leading unified communications platform that enables presence, IM, voice and video conferencing plus the transparent integration of these functions within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 productivity software including PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook. Progent offers the skills of Microsoft-certified consultants who can help your company to set up and manage Skype for Business client software to accommodate your at-home employees. For details about Progent's support expertise for Skype for Business, visit Skype for Business integration experts.
• FaceTime is Apple's multiuser video calling platform for compatible iOS and macOS devices. FaceTime runs over Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Newer editions of FaceTime support up to 32 simultaneous users for video sessions. To learn more about Progent's support services for Apple FaceTime, visit Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
• Webex Meeting Center supports online conferencing for most computing devices. Delivered via Cisco's Webex Cloud platform, Webex capabilities include sharing specific content or screens, presentations that incorporate rich media such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Flash videos, session recording, plus revision and playback for future reference. To learn more about Progent's consulting expertise for Webex as well as for other video conferencing solutions from Cisco, see Progent's Webex Meeting Center support services.
• Teams is Microsoft's next-generation replacement for Skype for Business. Teams provides a portal for conversations, contacts, and information with features such as voice/video conferencing, threaded chat, plus file sharing. For details about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft Teams and for other Microsoft 365 apps, refer to Progent's Microsoft Teams consulting services.
• Other Voice/Video Conferencing Apps supported by Progent's conferencing experts include Google Meet, Amazon Chime, Zoom, and Slack. Progent can provide configuration and troubleshooting services for these conferencing platforms and help your business to tune your WAN architecture to host them.

Microsoft Integrated Collaboration Software for At-Home Workers
Microsoft's collaboration platforms are tightly integrated with Microsoft's familiar Office and Microsoft 365 suites, offering a powerful environment of applications that deliver a consistent user experience for sharing data and ideas throughout a corporate network and on a broad range of endpoints. Progent has provided online consulting support for SharePoint and Exchange since their original publication and can help businesses to tune these flagship collaboration platforms to maximize the effectiveness of your at-home workers.

Microsoft's collaboration platforms are tightly integrated with Microsoft's popular Office suite, providing a rich ecosystem of applications that deliver a consistent user experience for sharing information across multiple sites and on a wide variety of endpoint devices. Progent has provided remote consulting services for SharePoint and Exchange since their initial releases and can help at-home workers set up and use these flagship collaboration platforms to maximize productivity.

Microsoft Teams works on top of Microsoft 365 and supports third-party cloud services to deliver real-time collaboration and communication. Designed as a substitute for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium can enable chat, video meetings with screen sharing, phone calls, cloud voicemail, group email, as well as file and app sharing. Teams is tightly integrated with Microsoft 365 and depends on Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Azure Entra (previously called Azure Active Directory) for supporting its complete range of capabilities. To learn more about Progent's support services for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium, see planning and configuration expertise for Microsoft Teams.

SharePoint uses web sites to enable collaboration and information delivery by providing policy-driven access to content, workflow, and utilities for searching through enterprise-wide business data. SharePoint allows you to create secure web portals that permits at-home workforce to see and update consolidated corporate intelligence via Wikis, Blogs, social sites, and Web Parts (Widgets). For information about Progent's SharePoint expertise, refer to SharePoint integration and application development consulting.

Exchange and Exchange Online offer secure collaboration features including public folders, shared mailboxes, and shared calendars and contacts. Progent's Microsoft certified Exchange experts can show you how to activate and utilize these features for your at-home workers. To find out about Progent's Exchange consulting expertise, visit integration consulting services for Exchange Server.

OneDrive is Microsoft�s shared cloud-based file hosting and synchronization service, comparable to GoogleDrive. At-home users can save files to OneDrive, and co-workers can access them safely through a web browser. Provided with Microsoft 365, OneDrive allows remote employees to jointly author files. Revisions made offline are automatically synced when you go back online. For information about Progent's consulting expertise for OneDrive, go to Onedrive integration consulting.

Cloud Integration for Teleworkers
Progent offers advanced online assistance for helping organizations to create, maintain and troubleshoot integrated network models that incorporate internal data centers, at-home workers, branches, plus public cloud resources. Progent offers top-tier consultant for all modes of public cloud service including Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Progent can help at-home workers resolve problems with public cloud access, authentication, and security.

Azure is a leading family of public cloud software and services that allows you to utilize infrastructure, servers, and critical apps hosted on Microsoft's massive cloud. Microsoft Azure includes over 100 cloud-based services such as the ability to host Windows and Linux-based VMs, on-demand cloud storage, email and messaging, app development with Visual Studio, and data backup. Progent can help your organization to set up VMs on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate storage on Azure Storage services, streamline identity management with Azure Active Directory, and plan data backup and restore systems with Azure Backup. Progent's cloud experts can also help you establish protected connections to Azure services for teleworkers by configuring and troubleshooting firewall appliances and VPN IPsec tunnels. For information about Progent's expertise for Azure, see Microsoft Azure consulting services.

Microsoft 365, previously branded Office 365, is Microsoft's growing family of business productivity applications and cloud services available on a subscription basis. Microsoft apps and services are provided in a selection of plans designed for users ranging from students and households to large enterprises. Progent offers fast and easy remote contact with consultants familiar with Microsoft 365-compatible devices running Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android operating systems. Progent's experts can assist you to evaluate the various subscription plans available for Microsoft 365 and configure 365 apps for your teleworkers in a way that delivers top business value. To find out about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft 365, refer to Microsoft 365 consulting expertise.

Microsoft 365 Exchange Online is one of the most popular applications in Azure-hosted Microsoft 365 product suite. Exchange Online provides the benefits of lower costs for data center infrastructure, easier management, on-demand scaling, high availability, and other benefits associated with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Exchange Online to run seamlessly with on-premises deployments of Exchange, allowing you to build hybrid cloud/onsite information systems. Progent's certified Exchange experts are available for as-needed assistance to guide you through challenging technical bottlenecks and can also provide comprehensive project management services to make sure your at-home workers have convenient and secure access to your Exchange Online deployment. For details Progent's support services for Exchange Online, go to Exchange Online integration and support expertise.

Amazon AWS is a pioneer in the public cloud arena and is the world's leading source of cloud services. Progent offers rapid and economical online access to cloud connectivity consultants who can assist your business to design, deploy, manage, and debug hybrid information networks that integrate Amazon AWS cloud services with local data centers and with other popular cloud platforms like Azure. Progent also offers the skills of Cisco-certified CCIE networking experts to help your company to build a high-availability network model so your employees have a productive computing experience regardless of whether they are working from your headquarters, a remote branch, at home, or on the road. To find out about Progent's support services for Amazon AWS, visit Amazon AWS integration support.

Google Cloud Platform is a popular set of public cloud services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco experts can assist your business to scale your current IT resources with the Google Cloud, and Progent's DBA consultants can show you how to make your mission-critical applications cloud ready so your telecommuters can take full advantage of Google Cloud services. Progent's consultants can assist your business to set up VMs on GCP Compute Engine, design an efficient storage solution with Google Cloud Storage services, and simplify access control for telecommuters with Google Cloud Identity. Progent can also help your business to use GCP's management tools to control and monitor your GCP ecosystem. To learn, visit Google Cloud Platform integration support.

Help Desk Services for At-Home Workers
A fast, company-wide changeover to a teleworker business model, which might be the result of an epidemic or as an element of a disaster recovery/business continuity process, can overstretch even a high-performing in-house Call Center. Progent's Call Center services allow organizations of any size to outsource or expand their Help Desk Call Center with Progent's remote Technical Response Center (TRC) services.

• Progent's Standard Call Center services leverage Progent's extensive network of remote technical support experts along with enterprise-class trouble ticketing and tracking technology to provide an economical, advanced Call Desk. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services provide a comprehensive solution that addresses all aspects of online Level 1 desktop support from help requests through trouble ticket creation, screen sharing, issue resolution, and incident reporting. A browser-based User's Service Portal enables from-home workers to check or edit the status of their current trouble tickets, enter information, and upload screenshots and relevant files. Support services are provided at a significant discount off Progent's normal Level 1 technical support rates, and Progent offers optional fast hand-off to Level 2 and Level 3 IT specialists to resolve advanced problems. For details, go to Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services for small companies.
• Progent's Help Desk Supplemental Service enables your company to supplement your current Support Desk organization by sharing delivery of Call Desk support services transparently between your in-house support organization and Progent's extensive roster of PC support engineers and subject matter specialists. Progent's co-managed Call Center service uses a collective support solution based on the number one professional services automation platform for handling service requests and ticketing, establishing responsibility, tracking progress, and producing management reports. To learn how Progent's Help Desk Call Center Supplementation Services can enable your company to provide world-class desktop support to your at-home employees, go to Progent's Help Desk supplementation Services.

Security and Compliance for Telecommuters
At-home workers commonly use their personal devices and often operate in a poorly secured physical space. This increases their vulnerability to cyber threats and calls for judicious deployment of firewalls, anti-malware tools, MFA-based identity verification, remote monitoring, thorough user training, and the development of policies built on best practices. Progent's veteran group of IT security solutions experts can assist your business to design, deploy and manage a compliant cybersecurity solution that protects vital information assets in networks that include an at-home workforce.

Firewalls enable you to build a network that can be safely accessed by local users as well as by teleworkers, mobile users, vendors, clients, and the public. Modern firewall appliances permit you to configure and control different permissions to different groups of users and to scale your IT network and modify your cybersecurity posture as your company evolves and as cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated. Progent works with both current and older firewall devices from all leading manufacturers including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, WatchGuard, Juniper, SonicWall and Fortinet. To find out more about Progent's firewall configuration services, see firewall integration and support expertise.

Online Endpoint Security Monitoring makes it possible to track the disparate computers used by remote workers and either reject or spot and respond to the latest threats such as ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring services, a lightweight software agent is put on each protected endpoint, monitoring all activity and using state-of-the-art machine learning from SentinelOne to detect zero-day threats on arrival. When an attack is spotted, ProSight Active Security Monitoring instantly isolates the impacted endpoint from the corporate network to contain the malware. Because the ProSight ASM agent is autonomous, endpoints stay secure even when they are disconnected from the Internet. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. To learn more about ProSight Active Security Monitoring, go to remote endpoint monitoring for telecommuters.

Progent's Duo authentication Service Plans incorporate Cisco's Duo technology to defend against compromised passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo supports single-tap identity verification on iOS, Google Android, and other out-of-band devices. With 2FA, when you log into a protected application and give your password you are asked to confirm your identity on a device that only you have and that uses a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A broad selection of devices can be used for this second form of authentication including an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You may designate multiple verification devices. For more information about ProSight Duo two-factor identity authentication services, visit Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for teleworkers.

Security Audits can evaluate the exposure of your network to all classes of outside and internal security threats for a network that includes an at-home workforce. Progent can deploy online, automated security inventory scanning for rapidly and affordably detecting a wide variety of security holes that can be found via the Internet. Progent's endpoint security audit consulting services, which can be managed by network security professionals with top certifications such as CISA, CISSP, and GIAC, can assist your company to evaluate your processes and governance policies and review your network architecture to allow you to design top-level security for your at-home workers.

Horizon3.ai's NodeZero Penetration Testing Platform is a leading-edge penetration test (pentest) product family that supports autonomous threat assessment of your at-home connectivity solution as well as your internal and perimeter networks so you can expose, prioritize, fix, and verify security vulnerabilities before malicious hackers can exploit them. Progent's pentest experts can assist you to deploy NodeZero to carry out comprehensive pentests of your perimeter and your internal network in order to evaluate your present security profile. Progent's NodeZero experts can also help you to harden your existing network security and can assist you to plan and deploy a unified cybersecurity ecosystem that simplifies management and delivers maximum protection for on-prem, cloud-based, at-home, and perimeter IT resources. To learn additional information about Progent's threat analysis services powered by on NodeZero's pentest platform, visit Consulting Services for NodeZero's Penetration Test Products.

Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home (WFH) Network
To view or download a white paper about critical things to focus on for securing a network that supports telecommuters, click:
Protecting a Work-From-Home Network White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)

Data Protection Solutions for At-Home Workers
Data Protection covers backing up and recovering critical data in order to avoid data loss and minimize restoration time and effort in the event of storage problems resulting from hardware breakdowns, programming glitches, user error, malware, or any other reason. Dependable data protection strategies can be particularly difficult to architect and maintain in hybrid environments that incorporate private data centers, public clouds, and at-home workers.

• Backup/Restore strategies for an at-home workforce must cover multiple kinds of personally owned endpoints. Progent can provide quick remote access to consultants familiar with a wide range of products for backing up Windows, Apple and Linux/UNIX powered servers and desktops as well as notebooks, iOS and Android tablets and smartphones. Popular backup/restore products maintained by Progent's backup/recovery experts include Barracuda Backup, Microsoft Azure Backup, Symantec Backup Exec, Acronis Backup and Recovery, Retrospect, and Time Machine. To back up data distributed throughout a hybrid network, Progent can provide ProSight Data Protection Services, a backup/recovery service that utilizes cloud-based storage and features fine-grained recovery and centralized management capabilities.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity (DR/BC) plans often envision circumstances that call for a quick switch to an at-home workforce. Progent's expert disaster recovery planning consultants and business continuity planning specialists can assist your business to create, document and validate a DR/BC strategy that addresses the logistics of switching to an at-home workforce.

Unified Management for Remote Workers
Microsoft has renamed and rebundled its endpoint management platforms under the name Endpoint Manager, which includes Intune for cloud-based management of remote endpoints and Configuration Manager for managing on-premises endpoints. Microsoft Endpoint Manager features a unified solution for safeguarding critical data by controlling onsite, mobile, and at-home endpoints.

Microsoft Intune
Intune is a component of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also features Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud service for managing and protecting mobile devices and applications. Remote endpoint computers can be user owned or business owned. Network admins managing the enrolled endpoint devices of telecommuters can use Intune to provision and validate applications on devices, push patches and certificates, set up rules for permission to access data and resources, manage passwords, establish VPN connections, control how teleworkers share information, set up threat protection, ensure compliance, and wipe corporate information from missing, stolen or deactivated endpoint devices. Microsoft Intune can be used with iOS/iPadOS, Android, Windows, and macOS endpoints. For information about Intune and to find out how Progent can assist you to use Microsoft's Endpoint Management to administer the endpoint devices of your teleworkers, go to Intune mobile endpoint management experts.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced unified Mobile Device Management product that allows network managers to keep offsite endpoints current and secure. Workspace ONE uses VMware AirWatch for centralized endpoint administration combined with VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery platform for authorization control, application management, and configuration management of endpoint devices. Workspace ONE operates with devices powered by Windows 10, macOS, Apple iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or leading distributions of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud-based service or as an on-site deployment via a perpetual license. Top features of Workspace ONE include fast over-the-air provisioning of new laptops, quick onboarding of new employees, policy set up and enforcement for all categories of endpoints, unifies reporting and analytics, email encryption, and integration with Microsoft apps and cloud-based products. For information about Progent's support for VMware Workspace ONE, visit VMware Workspace ONE remote device management expertise.

Contact Progent for At-Home Worker Expertise
To get in touch with Progent about creating and managing a productive work-from-home solution for your Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania business, call 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.