Wilmington At Home Workers Connectivity Consultants

Expanding your telecommuter workforce may have a major impact on IT architecture, security/compliance, and corporate processes. Progent has 20 years of background assisting small and mid-size businesses to plan, configure, administer, tune, and debug IT networks that incorporate at-home workers. Progent can help your Wilmington company to pick the appropriate technologies and follow leading practices in creating and maintaining a safe virtual office solution for teleworkers that facilitates teamwork and delivers maximum value. Progent offers support services ranging from on demand guidance for helping you past occasional IT roadblocks to comprehensive project management to help you successfully complete business-critical tasks.

Progent's consultants can help Wilmington, Delaware companies to with any facet of creating a high-functioning remote work environment by delivering network infrastructure design and configuration services, IP voice troubleshooting, video conferencing integration, collaboration platform customization and training, public cloud connectivity, Help Desk augmentation, security and compliance, backup/restore solutions, and unified management.

Network Infrastructure for a Remote Workforce
Configuring the network infrastructure needed to support an at-home work environment can be especially challenging if you have to accommodate a mix of personal equipment such as PCs and laptops, routers, and wireless APs from various manufacturers and with a variety of OS software and firmware releases. Progent's experience providing online help for both legacy as well as current IT products in virtual office venues enables you to make cost-effective use of your available network infrastructure and offers ready access to top-tire consultants for making essential updates. Services available from Progent to help you to create a productive work-at-home infrastructure include:

• Virtual Private Network technology allows you to establish a safe tunnel for authorized remote workers to use IT assets located at your company datacenter or in a public cloud. Progent can help your company to configure and maintain VPN access between your at-home workforce and your various network resources by providing remote VPN integration consulting. For businesses with Cisco's ASA firewalls, Progent's Cisco ASA Firewall experts can help your telecommuters to utilize Cisco's popular AnyConnect software for secure VPN connections for a wide range of endpoint devices including Windows, macOS, Apple iOS, Linux, and Google Android.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) products allow a teleworker to view and use a data center PC's desktop. This technology gives IT managers substantial control over the computing environment of telecommuters and offers them a familiar experience. Progent's virtual desktop consulting services include Windows Remote Desktop integration and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI expertise.
• Routers connect at-home computer networks to the Internet and support VPN connections, home Wi-Fi connectivity, and firewall services. Progent offers expert online support for integrating routers from all major manufacturers. See router configuration support from Cisco-certified consultants.
• Home Wi-Fi networks, often supporting families and guests, are commonly used by at-home employees to connect to their router for work. This can create throughput and security issues. Progent can assist businesses to mitigate these problems by providing services like Cisco Aironet integration expertise, Cisco Meraki wireless installation consulting, and Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi AP setup assistance.
• Internet connectivity methods impact the performance and reliability of connections between at-home workers and the company network. Line-of-business processes might require redundant Internet access in the event the primary connection breaks. Progent can provide guidance for identifying ISPs, picking sensible bandwidth and data volume packages, and setting up redundant Internet connections. Refer to Internet connectivity solutions.

IP Voice Solutions for Remote Workers
Expanding the business phone system to accommodate remote users is critical to maintaining an effective at-home workforce. A broad range of cloud-based VoIP products are used by SMBs to server telecommuters. Many larger organizations depend on Cisco's current or older platforms for VoIP management. Progent can assist organizations of all sizes to design or tune a telecommuter IP voice service that provides the versatility, convenience and protection required for telecommuters. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice experts can provide advanced support to help businesses tune their current Cisco VoIP environments to handle a growing remote workforce.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM) delivers enterprise telephony capabilities to devices such as IP phones, media processing platforms, Voice over IP gateways, and multimedia apps used across the network. CUCM supports other mixed media services such as messaging, voice/video conferencing, and customer interaction networks. For details about Progent's Unified Communications Manager expertise, refer to Cisco Unified Communications Manager consulting services.
• CallManager is Cisco's earlier call-processing agent and has been superseded by CUCM. Progent's consultants can help you to maintain your existing CallManager environment or migrate efficiently to Cisco's current IP telephony products. To learn about Progent's support services for Cisco CallManager and Cisco's other older IP voice platforms, visit CallManager consulting services.
• Cisco IP Gateways provide connectivity with public telephony networks and with users operating beyond the corporate perimeter like at-home workers. Progent offers expert support for Cisco's earlier generation IP gateways including the UC520, UC540 and UC560 products and for modern Cisco SIP gateways. See Cisco Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) gateway integration expertise.
• Other VoIP Platforms supported by Progent's consultants include Vonage, Intermedia Unite and 8x8. Progent can help you to expand your wide area network infrastructure to support these VoIP solutions and provide as-needed deployment and troubleshooting services.

Video Conferencing for Teleworkers
A wide selection of video conferencing platforms from major vendors support virtual meetings, video conferencing, chat sessions, and screen sharing for both onsite workers and teleworkers. Many organizations utilize multiple products to accommodate their various partners and clients. Progent's communications experts can assist you to maintain your existing conferencing ecosystem and enhance the engagement of your remote employees.

• Skype for Business is Microsoft's popular unified communications product that enables real-time presence, instant messaging, voice and video calling and conferencing as well as the transparent integration of these functions within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 productivity software such as PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook. Progent can provide the skills of Microsoft-certified consultants who can assist you to configure and manage Skype for Business client software to support your at-home workforce. To learn more about Progent's support expertise for Skype for Business, see Skype for Business integration experts.
• FaceTime is Apple's multiuser video phone app for compatible iOS, iPadOS, iPod and Mac devices. FaceTime runs over Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Later versions of FaceTime allow as many as 32 simultaneous users for voice/video sessions. For details about Progent's support expertise for Apple FaceTime, see Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
• Webex Meeting Center provides online conferencing for virtually all desktop or mobile devices. Offered via Cisco's Webex Cloud, Webex capabilities include sharing granular content or screens, presentations that incorporate rich media such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Flash videos, network-based recording, plus revision and playback for training. For details about Progent's consulting services for Webex and for other IP video solutions from Cisco, visit Progent's Webex Meeting Center support services.
• Teams is Microsoft's next-generation replacement for Skype for Business. Teams acts as a portal for conversations, contacts, and information with capabilities such as IP voice and video calling, persistent threaded chat, plus file sharing. For details about Progent's support expertise for Microsoft Teams and for other Microsoft 365 apps, refer to Progent's Microsoft Teams consulting services.
• Additional Voice/Video Conferencing Platforms supported by Progent's conferencing experts include Google Meet, Amazon Chime, Zoom, and Slack. Progent can deliver configuration and debugging expertise for these products and help you to tune your WAN infrastructure to host them.

Microsoft Collaboration Platforms for an At-Home Workforce
Microsoft's collaboration products are closely integrated with Microsoft's popular Office and Microsoft 365 suites, offering a powerful ecosystem of applications that create a consistent user experience for exchanging information across multiple sites and on a broad range of endpoints. Progent has provided remote consulting services for SharePoint and Exchange Server since their first publication and can help your company to configure these flagship collaboration platforms to optimize the effectiveness of your remote 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 with Microsoft 365 and integrates with third-party cloud services to deliver real-time collaboration and communication. Designed as a substitute for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams can enable chat, audio/video meetings with screen sharing, phone calls, cloud voicemail, group email, as well as file and app sharing. Teams is closely integrated with Microsoft 365 and relies on Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Entra (formerly called Azure Active Directory) for supporting its complete range of capabilities. For details about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Teams, see solution design and configuration expertise for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium.

SharePoint utilizes web sites to allow collaboration and knowledge sharing by offering policy-based delivery of content, workflow, and tools for searching through company-wide business data. SharePoint permits you to create secure web portals that allows at-home workers to see and edit aggregated corporate intelligence via Wikis, Blogs, social networking web sites, and Web Parts. For details about Progent's SharePoint support services, visit SharePoint configuration and development expertise.

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 learn about Progent's Exchange support services, go to planning and configuration consulting services for Microsoft Exchange Server.

OneDrive is Microsoft�s collaborative cloud storage service, comparable to GoogleDrive. Remote workers can save files to OneDrive, and co-workers anywhere can access them securely via a browser. Provided with Microsoft 365, OneDrive enables remote workers to co-author files. Edits made offline are uploaded when you go back online. For information about Progent's support services for OneDrive, visit Onedrive configuration experts.

Cloud Integration Services for Telecommuters
Progent offers affordable online assistance for helping organizations to create, manage and repair cohesive network architectures that include physical data centers, telecommuters, branches, and public cloud services. Progent offers expertise for all types of public cloud service delivery such as Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service. Progent can help telecommuters fix issues with public cloud access, authentication, and cybersecurity.

Microsoft Azure is a leading family of public cloud software and services that allows you to utilize infrastructure, servers, and critical apps running on Microsoft's extensive cloud. Microsoft Azure features over one hundred cloud-based services such as hosting for Windows and Linux-based virtual machines, scalable cloud storage, email and messaging, app development with Visual Studio, and data protection. Progent can help you to set up VMs on Azure Virtual Machines, configure cloud-based storage on Azure Storage services, unify identity management with Azure AD, and plan backup and restore systems with Azure Backup. Progent can also help you create protected access to Azure services for remote workers by configuring and troubleshooting firewall appliances and VPN IPsec tunnels. For details about Progent's support services for Microsoft Azure, refer to Microsoft Azure consulting services.

Microsoft 365, formerly branded Office 365, is Microsoft's popular family of client productivity software and cloud services offered on a subscription basis. Microsoft apps and services are provided in a selection of bundles intended for customers ranging from individuals and small offices to large corporations. Progent offers quick and affordable online contact with consultants familiar with Microsoft 365-compatible endpoints based on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android operating systems. Progent's experts can help your business to evaluate the numerous subscription plans available for Microsoft 365 and deploy 365 apps for your at-home workers in a way that delivers maximum business value. To find out about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft 365, refer to Microsoft 365 consulting support.

Exchange Online is one of the most popular cloud-based applications in the Microsoft 365 product suite. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online offers the advantages of lower costs for data center infrastructure, easier management, dynamic scaling, high availability, and other advantages inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has engineered Microsoft 365 Exchange Online to run transparently with local deployments of Exchange, allowing customers to build hybrid networks. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide occasional assistance to get you past challenging IT bottlenecks and can also provide end-to-end project management services to make sure your remote workers have convenient and safe access to your Exchange Online environment. To find out Progent's consulting expertise for Exchange Online, go to Exchange Online configuration and support consulting.

Amazon AWS is a trailblazer in the public cloud market and is the world's biggest provider of cloud-based services. Progent offers quick and economical online contact with cloud connectivity experts who can assist your business to plan, implement, manage, and troubleshoot hybrid information networks that integrate Amazon AWS cloud services with on-premises data centers and with other public clouds such as Azure. Progent also can provide the skills of Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to help you to create a high-uptime network architecture so your users have a consistent computing environment regardless of whether they are working from your main office, a remote branch, from home, or on the move. For details about Progent's expertise for Amazon AWS, see Amazon AWS consulting expertise.

Google Cloud (GCP) is a leading set of cloud services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service products. Progent's certified Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can assist you to expand your current IT resources with the Google Cloud, and Progent's DBA consultants can show you how to make your critical apps cloud ready so your at-home workers can take full advantage of Google Cloud services. Progent can assist your business to set up VMs on GCP Compute Engine, plan a cost-effective storage solution with Google Cloud Storage services, and simplify identity management for telecommuters with GCP Cloud Identity services. Progent's consultants can also assist your organization to use GCP's unified management tools to control and monitor your GCP ecosystem. To learn, visit Google Cloud Platform integration support.

Help Desk Call Center Services for Telecommuters
A sudden, enterprise-wide switchover to a teleworker business model, which might be the result of a pandemic or as a component of a disaster recovery plan, can overstretch even a well-staffed in-house Help Desk. Progent's Help Desk services make it possible for organizations to outsource or expand their Support Desk with Progent's online Technical Response Center services.

• Progent's Standard Help Desk services leverage Progent's extensive network of remote technical support experts combined with world-class trouble ticketing and follow-up software to provide an economical, advanced Help Desk Call Center. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services offer a comprehensive solution that handles all aspects of remote Level 1 desktop technical support from service requests through trouble ticket creation, screen sharing, problem resolution, and incident reporting. A browser-based User's Service Portal enables telecommuters to check or revise their current tickets, enter information, and append screenshots and attachments. Technical support services are provided at a significant price reduction off Progent's normal Level 1 technical service charges, and Progent makes available optional fast escalation to Level 2 and Level 3 support specialists to deal with complex problems. For more information, visit Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services for small businesses.
• Progent's Call Center Augmentation Service allows your company to expand your current Call Center organization by splitting delivery of Call Center support services seamlessly between your in-house IT support staff and Progent's extensive team of desktop support technicians and subject matter specialists. Progent's shared Call Desk service uses a collaborative support model based on the leading PSA tool for handling help requests and trouble tickets, establishing responsibility, monitoring progress, and generating management reports. To learn how Progent's Support Desk Augmentation Services can enable your business to deliver best-in-class IT support to your teleworkers, go to Progent's Help Desk Call Center supplementation Services.

Security for At-Home Workers
At-home employees commonly use their personal computers and often operate in an unsecured physical area. This situation increases their vulnerability to cyber attacks and calls for careful configuration of firewalls, anti-malware tools, MFA-based identity verification, remote endpoint monitoring, intensive user training, and the development of policies based on best practices. Progent's seasoned roster of data security support experts can help you to design, implement and maintain a compliant security solution that guards critical IT resources in networks that include telecommuters.

Firewalls enable you to build a network that can be safely utilized by local users and by an at-home workforce, mobile employees, vendors, customers, and other stakeholders. Modern firewall appliances permit you to assign and manage different access rights to various groups of users and to scale your IT network and modify your cybersecurity posture as your company evolves and as cyber threats become increasingly complex. Progent supports both current and legacy firewall appliances from all leading vendors including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, WatchGuard, Juniper, and Fortinet. To find out more about Progent's firewall support services, see firewall integration and support expertise.

Remote Endpoint Monitoring makes it easy to watch over the disparate computers utilized by an at-home workforce and either block or spot and mitigate the latest threats such as ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) services, a small-footprint agent is installed on every protected endpoint device, watching all activity and utilizing advanced AI technology from SentinelOne to detect new threats on arrival. When an attack is spotted, ProSight Active Security Monitoring instantly disconnects the infected endpoint device from the corporate network to contain the malware. Because the ProSight ASM agent is self-contained, endpoint devices remain protected even if they are not connected to the Internet. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. To find out more about ProSight ASM, refer to remote endpoint monitoring for telecommuters.

Progent's Duo MFA Services incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to protect against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo enables one-tap identity verification on iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. With Duo 2FA, when you sign into a secured online account and enter your password you are requested to verify your identity on a unit that only you have and that uses a different network channel. A wide range of devices can be used for this added form of ID validation such as a smartphone or wearable, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You may register several verification devices. For details about Duo two-factor identity validation services, see Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for teleworkers.

Security Audits can assess the exposure of your information system to all types of external and local security threats for a network that incorporates remote workers. Progent can deploy online, automated cybersecurity inventory scanning for rapidly and affordably detecting a broad range of security holes that can be found via the Internet. Progent's endpoint security assessment experts, which can be managed by data security professionals with advanced credentials such as CISA, ISSAP, and GIAC, can help you to evaluate your procedures and policies and review your network infrastructure to enable you to design the highest level of 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 environment as well as your internal and perimeter networks so you can uncover, prioritize, remediate, and confirm security weaknesses before threat actors can exploit them. Progent can assist you to deploy NodeZero to perform thorough penetration tests of your network perimeter and your internal network so you can determine your present security profile. Progent can also help you to harden your existing network security and can assist you to plan and implement a cohesive cybersecurity strategy that streamlines management and delivers optimum cyber defense for on-prem, multi-cloud, at-home, and perimeter IT assets. To learn additional information about Progent's threat analysis solutions powered by on NodeZero's PEN test products, see Consulting Support for NodeZero's Penetration Test Platform.

Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home (WFH) Environment
To view or download a white paper about key things to focus on for securing an IT environment that incorporates work-from-home staff, click:
Protecting a Work-From-Home Environment White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)

Data Protection for At-Home Workers
The field of Data Protection involves backing up and recovering critical data in order to prevent data loss and reduce recovery time in case of storage system failures resulting from equipment issues, software hiccups, operator mistakes, malware, or other causes. Reliable data protection strategies can be especially difficult to architect and maintain in hybrid networks that combine in-house data centers, public clouds, and at-home workers.

• Backup/Restore solutions for teleworkers must cover diverse types of personally owned endpoint devices. Progent offers quick online help from consultants familiar with a broad range of platforms for backing up Microsoft Windows, Apple and Linux/UNIX powered servers and desktop computers as well as laptops, iPads and handhelds. Popular backup/restore products supported by Progent's data protection experts include Barracuda Backup, Azure Backup, DoubleTake Software, CrashPlan, Retrospect, and Time Machine. To protect resources spread throughout a wide area network, Progent offers ProSight Data Protection Services, a managed backup/recovery service that uses cloud-based storage and includes granular restore and unified management capabilities.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity (DR/BC) plans commonly envision circumstances that require a rapid changeover to an at-home workforce. Progent's senior disaster recovery planning experts and business continuity planning consultants can assist your business to develop, document and validate a DR/BC strategy that includes 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 title Endpoint Manager, which encompasses Intune for cloud-based management of remote devices and Configuration Manager for managing onsite endpoints. Microsoft Endpoint Manager features a unified solution for protecting corporate data by controlling on-premises, mobile, and at-home endpoints.

Intune
Intune is a component of Microsoft's Endpoint Management family that also features Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud-based service for managing and protecting off-premises computers and software. Managed endpoint devices can be personally owned or business owned. Network admins managing the endpoint computers of telecommuters can use Intune to deploy and validate apps on devices, push patches and certificates, configure rules for permission to access data and networks, manage passwords, create VPN tunnels, control how home-based workers share data, establish threat protection, ensure compliance, and erase sensitive data from missing, stolen or decommissioned endpoint devices. Intune runs with iOS, Google Android, Windows, and macOS computers. For information about Microsoft Intune and how Progent can help your company to use Microsoft's Endpoint Management to manage the endpoint computers of your at-home workers, refer to Intune mobile device management experts.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced unified Mobile Device Management product that allows network administrators to keep offsite endpoint devices up to date and secure. Workspace ONE incorporates VMware AirWatch for centralized endpoint management plus VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery technology for authorization control, app management, and configuration management of endpoint devices. Workspace ONE runs with devices based on Windows 10, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or popular distributions of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is available by subscription as a cloud-based service or as an on-premises deployment via a one-time purchase. Key capabilities of VMware Workspace ONE include rapid over-the-air deployment of new notebooks, quick onboarding of new users, policy set up and enforcement for all categories of devices, unifies reporting and analytics, email encryption, and seamless integration with Microsoft applications and cloud services. To find out about Progent's expertise for VMware Workspace ONE, visit VMware Workspace ONE mobile endpoint management expertise.

Contact Progent for At-Home Worker Expertise
To get in touch with Progent about building and maintaining an efficient telecommuter solution for your Wilmington, Delaware company, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.