Monterrey Offsite Workforce Connectivity Consulting and Support

Expanding your telecommuter workforce may have a major impact on IT architecture, security/compliance, and corporate culture. Progent has two decades of background assisting small and mid-size businesses to plan, configure, manage, tune, and troubleshoot IT networks that support work-from-home employees. Progent can assist your Monterrey organization to select the right technologies and adhere to leading practices in creating and maintaining a safe virtual ecosystem for teleworkers that facilitates collaboration and delivers maximum value. Progent can provide support services ranging from as-needed guidance for helping you past challenging technical bottlenecks to full project management or co-management to help you successfully complete mission-critical tasks.

Progent's consultants can assist Monterrey, Nuevo León companies to with any facet of building a high-functioning telecommuting ecosystem by providing infrastructure configuration services, VoIP PBX expertise, video conferencing integration, collaboration platform customization and training, public cloud integration, Call Desk augmentation, endpoint security, backup/restore solutions, and streamlined management.

Network Infrastructure for an At-Home Workforce
Integrating the physical and software infrastructure needed to support an at-home work environment can be particularly complicated if you have to manage a combination of worker-owned equipment like desktop computers and notebooks, routers, and wireless APs from an assortment of manufacturers and with a variety of OS software and firmware releases. Progent's background providing remote support for both legacy and modern technologies in virtual office venues enables you to make efficient use of your available network infrastructure and offers ready access to top-tire consultants for making necessary upgrades. Services offered by Progent to assist your company to create a productive telecommuting infrastructure include:

• Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology makes it possible to establish a safe connection for authenticated remote employees to use IT resources located at your corporate datacenter or in a public cloud. Progent can help you to deploy and manage VPN access between your at-home workforce and your various IT resources by providing online VPN configuration consulting. For businesses using Cisco's ASA security appliances, Progent's Cisco ASA consultants can help your at-home workers to utilize Cisco's AnyConnect client software to provide secure VPN connections for a wide selection of devices such as Windows, Mac, Apple iOS, Linux, and Google Android.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure platforms allow an at-home worker to view and interact with a remote PC's desktop. This technology provides network managers significant control over the digital environment of at-home employees and ensures remote users a familiar experience. Progent's VDI services include Windows Remote Desktop integration and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops expertise.
• Routers attach home networks to the Internet and support VPN tunnels, local Wi-Fi networks, and firewalls. Progent offers top-tier online consulting for integrating routers from a range of manufacturers. See router configuration services from Cisco-certified consultants.
• Home Wireless networks, often supporting the whole family and visitors, are commonly used by at-home employees to connect to their router for work. This can cause throughput and security problems. Progent can help you to mitigate these problems by delivering expertise like Aironet configuration consulting, Cisco Meraki WiFi deployment consulting, and Ubiquiti WiFi AP setup assistance.
• Internet connectivity methods impact the performance and availability of connections between at-home workers and the corporate data center. Vital applications may require redundant Internet connections in case the normal connection fails. Progent offers guidance for identifying service providers, picking appropriate service bundles, and configuring fault-tolerant Internet access. Refer to Internet access solutions.

IP Voice Integration for Remote Workers
Expanding the company phone system to accommodate remote users is critical to supporting an effective at-home workforce. A variety of cloud-based digital PBX products are popular with SMBs to support teleworkers. Many enterprises depend on Cisco's modern or legacy platforms for VoIP management. Progent can help businesses of all sizes to plan or maintain a telecommuter IP voice environment that delivers the flexibility, transparency and security needed for at-home workers. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice consultants offer advanced support to help businesses tune their existing Cisco VoIP environments to handle an expanding at-home workforce.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM or CUCM) extends enterprise telephony capabilities to devices like VoIP phones, media processing products, Voice over IP gateways, and multimedia apps used across the network. Unified Communications Manager manages additional mixed media services such as unified messaging, video conferencing, and customer collaboration networks. For details about Progent's CUCM expertise, see Cisco Unified Communications Manager expertise.
• Cisco CallManager is Cisco's earlier call-processing software and has been replaced by Cisco Unified CM. Progent's consultants can assist you to maintain your existing CallManager deployment or migrate efficiently to Cisco's modern IP telephony solutions. For details about Progent's expertise for CallManager and Cisco's other legacy IP voice products, visit CallManager consulting.
• Cisco IP Gateways provide integration with PSTN networks and with users operating beyond the corporate firewall such as telecommuters. Progent offers expert support for Cisco's legacy IP gateways including the UC520, UC540 and UC560 products as well as for modern Cisco Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) gateways. See Cisco Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) gateway integration expertise.
• Other VoIP Platforms supported by Progent's consultants include Vonage, RingCentral and 8x8. Progent can help you to update your wide area network architecture to support these solutions and deliver on-demand deployment and debugging services.

Voice/Video Conferencing for Remote Workers
A broad range of voice/video conferencing platforms from major vendors enable virtual meetings, video and voice conferencing, chat sessions, and content sharing for both onsite users and at-home workers. Many organizations utilize multiple products to accommodate their various partners and clients. Progent can assist your organization to maintain your existing voice/video conferencing ecosystem and optimize the engagement of your at-home workforce.

• Skype for Business is Microsoft's popular communications product that enables real-time presence, instant messaging, voice and video conferencing as well as the transparent integration of these functions within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 productivity software including PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook. Progent can provide the expertise of Microsoft-certified consultants who can assist your company to set up and manage Skype for Business clients to accommodate your at-home workforce. To learn more about Progent's support expertise for Skype for Business, see Skype for Business consulting experts.
• FaceTime is Apple's multiuser video phone app for iOS, iPadOS, iPod and Mac computers and smartphones. FaceTime runs on Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Later editions of FaceTime support as many as 32 concurrent users for video calls. To learn more about Progent's consulting expertise for Apple FaceTime, see Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
• Webex Meeting Center provides online conferencing for virtually all desktop or mobile devices. Delivered through Cisco's Webex Cloud platform, Webex capabilities include sharing specific content or screens, presentations that embed rich media such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Flash videos, session recording, plus editing and playback for training. To learn more about Progent's consulting services for Webex as well as for other video conferencing products 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 conferencing, contacts, and information with features such as IP voice and video calling, persistent chat, plus file sharing. To learn more about Progent's support services for Teams and for other Microsoft 365 products, see Progent's Microsoft Teams consulting services.
• Other Conferencing Apps supported by Progent's conferencing experts include Google Meet, Amazon Chime, Zoom, and Slack. Progent can deliver configuration and troubleshooting services for these conferencing platforms and help your business to tune your WAN architecture to run them.

Microsoft Integrated Collaboration Platforms for an At-Home Workforce
Microsoft's collaboration platforms are closely integrated with Microsoft's familiar Office and Microsoft 365 suites, providing a rich environment of productivity apps that create a consistent user interface for exchanging information throughout a corporate network and on a wide selection of endpoint computers. Progent has delivered remote consulting services for Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange Server since their original releases and can assist businesses to tune these critical collaboration platforms to maximize the productivity of your remote workforce.

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 supports third-party cloud services to deliver real-time collaboration. Designed as a substitute for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium 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 delivering its full range of features. For additional information about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium, visit solution design and deployment expertise for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium.

SharePoint utilizes web sites to allow collaboration and knowledge sharing by offering policy-driven access to content, workflow, and utilities for searching through enterprise-wide business data. SharePoint permits you to create secure portals that allows remote workforce to see and update aggregated business intelligence via Intranets (Wikis), Blogs, social web sites, and Web Parts. For details about Progent's SharePoint consulting services, visit 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 support services, visit integration expertise for Microsoft Exchange.

OneDrive is Microsoft�s collaborative cloud-based file hosting and synchronization service, similar to GoogleDrive. Remote users can store files to OneDrive, and colleagues can share them safely through a browser. Provided with Office 365, OneDrive enables home employees to co-author documents. Revisions created offline are automatically synced when you go back online. To learn about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft OneDrive, see Onedrive integration consulting.

Cloud Integration for Telecommuters
Progent can provide affordable online assistance for helping businesses to build, manage and repair integrated network models that include internal data centers, teleworkers, branches, and public cloud resources. Progent offers top-tier consultant for all types of cloud service such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Progent can help remote workers resolve issues with public cloud access, identity, and security.

Microsoft Azure is a leading family of cloud services that allows you to use IT infrastructure, virtual servers, and key applications running on Microsoft's extensive cloud. Azure includes more than 100 cloud-based services including the ability to host Windows and Linux-powered VMs, on-demand cloud storage, messaging, application development with Visual Studio, and data backup. Progent can help your organization to set up virtual machines on Azure Virtual Machines, configure storage on Azure Storage services, unify identity management with Azure Active Directory, and plan backup and recovery systems with Azure Backup. Progent can also help you create protected access to Azure for remote workers by configuring and troubleshooting firewalls and VPN IPsec tunnels. For details about Progent's support services for Microsoft Azure, go to Microsoft Azure expertise.

Microsoft 365, formerly branded Office 365, is Microsoft's popular suite of business productivity applications and cloud services available by subscription. Office apps and services are marketed in a selection of bundles intended for users ranging from individuals and small offices to large corporations. Progent can provide fast and affordable remote contact with consultants familiar with Microsoft 365-compatible endpoint devices running Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android operating systems. Progent can help your business to assess the various subscription bundles available for Microsoft 365 and configure 365 apps for your teleworkers in a way that delivers maximum business value. To learn about Progent's support services for Microsoft 365, see Microsoft 365 integration support.

Exchange Online is one of the most popular applications in Azure-hosted Microsoft 365 product suite. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online provides the advantages of reduced costs for physical infrastructure, easier management, on-demand scaling, high availability, and additional benefits inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Microsoft 365 Exchange Online to run smoothly with on-premises deployments of Exchange, allowing customers to build hybrid cloud/onsite networks. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide occasional help to get you through tough IT bottlenecks and also offer end-to-end project management outsourcing to ensure your teleworkers have convenient and safe access to your Exchange Online deployment. For details Progent's support services for Exchange Online, see Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and troubleshooting expertise.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a trailblazer in the public cloud arena and is the world's biggest provider of cloud services. Progent offers quick and affordable online access to cloud integration consultants who can help your organization to design, deploy, maintain, and debug hybrid information networks that integrate Amazon AWS cloud services with on-premises data centers and with other popular cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure. Progent also offers access to Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to assist your company to create a high-availability network architecture to make sure your employees have a productive computing experience regardless of whether they are working from your headquarters, a remote branch, at home, or on the move. To learn about Progent's expertise for Amazon AWS, refer to Amazon AWS consulting services.

Google Cloud is a popular set of public cloud services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Progent's certified Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can assist your organization to expand your existing IT resources with the Google Cloud, and Progent's database consultants can show you how to make your critical applications cloud ready so your telecommuters can benefit fully from Google Cloud Platform services. Progent's consultants can help you to set up virtual machines on Google Cloud Compute Engine, design an efficient storage solution with Google Cloud Storage, and simplify identity control for teleworkers with Google Cloud Identity. Progent can also help you to use GCP's management technology to control and monitor your GCP ecosystem. To find out, see Google Cloud Platform consulting services.

Help Desk Call Center Services for Telecommuters
A rapid, company-wide switchover to a teleworker workforce, which might be activated by an epidemic or as part of a disaster recovery preparedness plan, can overstretch even the most efficient internal Call Center. Progent's Help Desk services make it possible for businesses to outsource or augment their Call Center by using Progent's online Technical Response Center team.

• Progent's Standard Support Desk support services leverage Progent's nationwide team of online technical support specialists combined with world-class trouble ticketing and tracking software to provide an affordable, advanced Help Desk Call Center. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services provide an end-to-end solution that addresses all facets of remote Level 1 desktop support from initial help requests to ticket generation, screen sharing, issue resolution, and reporting. A browser-based User's Service Portal allows from-home workers to check or revise the status of their current tickets, add information, and append screen captures or relevant files. Desktop support services are delivered at a substantial discount off Progent's ordinary Level 1 technical support rates, and Progent offers optional fast hand-off to Level 2 and Level 3 IT specialists to resolve complex problems. For details, see Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services for small businesses.
• Progent's Help Desk Supplemental Service allows you to augment your current Help Desk organization by sharing delivery of Help Desk services seamlessly between your in-house IT support organization and Progent's extensive team of desktop support engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's co-managed Support Desk service is based on a collaborative support model utilizing the leading professional services automation (PSA) tool for handling service requests and ticketing, establishing ownership, tracking progress, and producing management reports. To find out how Progent's Call Desk Supplementation Services can help your company to provide world-class desktop support to your telecommuters, go to Progent's Call Center augmentation Services.

Security for At-Home Workers
At-home staff members typically utilize their own devices and usually work in a poorly secured physical space. This situation increases their susceptibility to malware attacks and calls for careful configuration of firewalls, AV tools, multi-factor authentication, remote monitoring, intensive end-user training, and the creation of security policies built on best practices. Progent's veteran team of cybersecurity support consultants can help you to design, implement and maintain an effective cybersecurity solution that guards critical IT assets in environments that include at-home workers.

Firewalls enable companies to build a network environment that can be safely utilized by on-premises users as well as by an at-home workforce, mobile users, vendors, customers, and the public. Next-generation firewall devices allow you to assign and manage appropriate access rights to different classes of users and to expand your IT network and modify your security profile as your company evolves and as cyber threats grow more complex. Progent works with both current and legacy security appliances from all major vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, WatchGuard, Juniper, and Fortinet. For more information about Progent's firewall configuration expertise, go to firewall support services.

Online Endpoint Monitoring makes it possible to watch over the various devices used by remote workers and either block or identify and respond to modern threats like ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) services, a small-footprint agent is installed on each secured endpoint, monitoring all activity and using advanced machine learning from SentinelOne to identify zero-day threats before they can spread. When an attack is spotted, ProSight Active Security Monitoring instantly disconnects the infected device from the network to quarantine the threat. Because the ProSight ASM agent is self-contained, endpoint devices stay secure even if they are disconnected from the Internet. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. For details about ProSight ASM, go to remote endpoint security monitoring for teleworkers.

Progent's Duo authentication Services utilize Cisco's Duo technology to defend against compromised passwords through the use of two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo enables single-tap identity confirmation on Apple iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. With Duo 2FA, when you log into a protected application and enter your password you are asked to confirm who you are on a device that only you possess and that uses a separate network channel. A wide range of devices can be used for this second form of authentication including an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline telephone, etc. You may register multiple verification devices. To find out more about ProSight Duo identity validation services, see Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for teleworkers.

Security Audits can assess the exposure of your information system to all classes of external and internal security threats for an environment that includes remote workers. Progent can deploy online, automated security inventory scanning for quickly and economically uncovering a wide variety of security holes that can be surfaced over the Internet. Progent's security assessment experts, which can be managed by network security experts with advanced credentials including CISM, CISSP, and GIAC, can help you to evaluate your procedures and policies and review your IT architecture to allow you to implement the highest level of protection for your remote workers.

Horizon3.ai's NodeZero PEN Testing Platform is a cutting-edge penetration test (pentest) product family that supports automated testing of your at-home environment as well as your internal and perimeter networks to help you identify, rank, remediate, and verify security vulnerabilities before malicious hackers can exploit them. Progent can help you to deploy NodeZero to perform comprehensive penetration tests of your perimeter and your internal IT infrastructure in order to determine your present security posture. Progent's NodeZero experts can also assist you to harden your existing network security and can help you to plan and deploy a cohesive cybersecurity strategy that streamlines management and delivers maximum protection for on-prem, cloud-based, remote, and perimeter IT assets. To find out additional details about Progent's threat assessment services powered by on NodeZero's PEN test products, refer to Consulting Services for NodeZero's Pentest Products.

Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home Network
To read or download a white paper about critical things to focus on for protecting a network that includes work-from-home staff, click:
Protecting a Work-From-Home (WFH) Environment White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)

Data Protection Solutions for Remote Workers
The field of Data Protection involves saving and restoring critical data in order to prevent data loss and minimize restoration time and effort in the event of storage problems resulting from equipment issues, programming glitches, user mistakes, malware, or other causes. Reliable data protection solutions can be particularly challenging to architect and manage in hybrid environments that incorporate in-house data centers, cloud resources, and an at-home workforce.

• Backup/Recovery solutions for at-home workers must address multiple types of user-owned endpoint devices. Progent can provide fast online help from experts familiar with a wide array of platforms for backing up Windows, Apple Mac and Linux/UNIX powered servers and desktops as well as notebooks, tablets and smartphones. Popular backup/recovery solutions maintained by Progent's data protection consultants include Barracuda Backup, Microsoft Azure Backup, Symantec Backup Exec, Acronis Backup and Recovery, Retrospect, and Time Machine. To protect resources spread across a wide area network, Progent can provide ProSight Data Protection Services, a managed backup/recovery service that utilizes cloud storage and features granular restore and unified management.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity (DR/BC) strategies often anticipate scenarios that call for a temporary switch to a work-at-home environment. Progent's expert disaster recovery planning experts and business continuity planning specialists can help your company to create, document and test a DR/BC plan that addresses the logistics of switching to an at-home workforce.

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

Microsoft Intune
Intune is a component of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also features Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud service for managing and securing mobile devices and software. Remote endpoint devices can be personally owned or business owned. IT admins managing the enrolled endpoint devices of at-home workers can use Intune to deploy and authenticate apps on managed devices, push updates and certificates, set up rules for accessing data and networks, set passwords, create VPN connections, determine how teleworkers share data, establish threat defense, ensure security compliance, and delete corporate data from missing, stolen or decommissioned endpoint devices. Intune can be used with iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS/OS X endpoints. To find out about Microsoft Intune and to find out how Progent can assist your company to use this platform to manage the devices of your at-home workforce, refer to Intune telecommuter endpoint management expertise.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced centralized Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform that helps network managers to keep remote endpoint devices up to date and secure. Workspace ONE uses VMware AirWatch technology for centralized endpoint management plus VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery platform for identity control, app management, and configuration management of endpoint devices. Workspace ONE runs with devices powered by Windows 10, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or leading distros of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud service or as an on-site product through a one-time purchase. Top features of VMware Workspace ONE include rapid remote deployment of out-of-the-box laptops, quick onboarding of new users, policy set up and enforcement for all classes of endpoints, unifies reporting and performance analytics, an email encryption gateway, and seamless integration with Microsoft apps and cloud-based products. To learn about Progent's expertise for VMware Workspace ONE, see VMware Workspace ONE remote endpoint management expertise.

Contact Progent for Remote Workforce Expertise
To get in touch with Progent about creating and managing a productive telecommuter environment for your Monterrey, Nuevo León company, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.