Adelaide Work from Home Employees Integration Consulting and Support

Expanding your at-home workforce may have a major effect on IT architecture, security/compliance, and company processes. Progent has two decades of background assisting SMBs to plan, deploy, administer, optimize, and troubleshoot IT networks that incorporate work-from-home employees. Progent can assist your Adelaide company to select the right tools and follow leading practices in creating and maintaining a safe virtual office ecosystem for teleworkers that promotes teamwork and returns top business value. Progent can provide services ranging from on demand expertise for getting you past occasional IT bottlenecks to comprehensive project management or co-management to help you carry out business-critical initiatives.

Progent's consultants can assist Adelaide, South Australia organizations to succeed with any facet of creating a high-performing telecommuting ecosystem by providing infrastructure design and configuration services, VoIP PBX troubleshooting, voice/video conferencing support, collaboration platform customization and training, public cloud integration, Call Desk augmentation, endpoint security, data protection solutions, and streamlined management.

Network Infrastructure for an At-Home Workforce
Configuring the network infrastructure required to support a remote work environment can be particularly complicated if you have to accommodate a combination of worker-owned hardware like desktop computers and notebooks, routers, and Wi-Fi APs from an assortment of vendors and with a variety of OS software and firmware levels. Progent's background providing remote support for both outdated and current technologies in remote office venues allows you to make cost-effective use of your existing network infrastructure and provides you with ready access to expertise for making necessary upgrades. Services offered by Progent to assist your company to implement a high-functioning telecommuting ecosystem include:

• Virtual Private Network technology makes it possible to create a safe connection for authenticated at-home workers to access IT assets situated at your company data center or in a public cloud. Progent can help your company to configure and manage VPN connections between your at-home workforce and your key network resources by providing remote VPN integration consulting. For businesses with Cisco's ASA firewalls, Progent's Cisco ASA experts can assist your telecommuters to utilize Cisco's popular AnyConnect software for secure VPN connections for a wide range of endpoint devices including Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, and Android.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure platforms allow a teleworker to view and use a remote computer's desktop. This provides network managers significant control over the digital environment of telecommuters and offers remote users a familiar experience. Progent's virtual desktop services include Windows Remote Desktop support and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI solutions.
• Routers attach home computer networks to the Internet and support VPN connections, local Wi-Fi connectivity, and firewall services. Progent can provide expert online consulting for setting up home routers from a variety of vendors. See router integration support from Cisco-certified experts.
• Home Wi-Fi networks, typically supporting families and guests, are commonly utilized by telecommuters to connect to their router for work. This can create performance as well as security issues. Progent can assist you to mitigate these issues by delivering expertise that include Cisco Aironet configuration expertise, Cisco-certified Meraki wireless installation consulting, and Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi AP integration help.
• Internet access solutions impact the speed and availability of connections between telecommuters and the corporate data center. Mission-critical processes may require redundant Internet access in the event the normal connection fails. Progent offers guidance for identifying ISPs, choosing appropriate service packages, and configuring high-availability Internet access. Refer to Internet access solutions.

IP Voice Integration for an At-Home Workforce
Extending the corporate PBX system to include remote users is critical to maintaining an effective work-at-home solution. A broad range of cloud-centric digital PBX products are used by SMBs to server remote users. Many enterprises depend on Cisco's modern or legacy products for IP voice solutions. Progent can help businesses of all sizes to design or maintain a telecommuter VoIP environment that delivers the flexibility, transparency and security required for telecommuters. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice experts can provide high-level support to help businesses optimize their existing Cisco IP voice environments to support an expanding at-home workforce.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM or CUCM) delivers high-end telephony capabilities to devices such as IP phones, media processing products, Voice over IP gateways, and mixed media software used across the network. CUCM supports additional mixed media services such as messaging, video conferencing, and team collaboration networks. For more information about Progent's Unified Communications Manager support, visit Cisco Unified CM consultants.
• Cisco CallManager is Cisco's earlier call-processing agent and has been superseded by CUCM. Progent's consultants can help your company to support your current CallManager deployment or migrate smoothly to Cisco's modern IP telephony products. To find out about Progent's support services for CallManager and Cisco's other legacy VoIP products, see CallManager consulting services.
• Cisco IP Gateways provide connectivity with PSTN networks and with users working outside the corporate perimeter such as telecommuters. Progent can provide expert support for Cisco's earlier generation IP gateways like the UC520, UC540 and UC560 product lines as well as for current Cisco SIP gateways. See Cisco Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) gateway integration consulting.
• Additional VoIP Platforms supported by Progent 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 integration and troubleshooting services.

Voice/Video Conferencing for an At-Home Workforce
A wide range of video conferencing platforms from leading technology companies support virtual meetings, video and voice conferencing, chat sessions, and screen/content sharing for both onsite users and telecommuters. Many companies utilize multiple products to accommodate their various partners and customers. Progent can help you to manage your existing voice/video conferencing environment and optimize the engagement of your remote employees.

• Skype for Business is Microsoft's popular communications product that supports presence, instant messaging, voice and video calling and conferencing plus the seamless integration of these capabilities within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 productivity software including PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. Progent offers the expertise of Microsoft-certified consultants who can assist you to configure and maintain Skype for Business client software to support your remote workforce. For details about Progent's support services for Skype for Business, visit Skype for Business consulting services.
• FaceTime is Apple's multiuser video calling app for iOS, iPadOS, iPod and Mac devices. FaceTime runs on Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Later editions of FaceTime allow as many as 32 simultaneous users for voice/video calls. For details about Progent's consulting services for FaceTime, visit Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
• Webex Meeting Center supports online conferencing for most desktop or mobile devices. Delivered through Cisco's Webex Cloud platform, Webex services include sharing discrete content or screens, presentations that incorporate rich media including Microsoft PowerPoint and Flash videos, session recording, plus revision and playback for future reference. For details about Progent's support services for Cisco Webex as well as for other IP video solutions from Cisco, see 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 content with features such as IP voice and video calling, threaded chat, plus data sharing. For details about Progent's support expertise for Teams and for other Microsoft 365 products, see Progent's Microsoft Teams consulting services.
• Other Voice/Video Conferencing Platforms supported by Progent include Google Meet, Amazon Chime, Zoom, and Slack. Progent can deliver configuration and troubleshooting services for these conferencing platforms and help you to optimize your WAN architecture to run them.

Microsoft Integrated Collaboration Platforms for Remote and Hybrid Workers
Microsoft's collaboration platforms are closely integrated with Microsoft's familiar Office families, providing a rich ecosystem of productivity apps that deliver a cohesive user interface for sharing data and ideas throughout a corporate network and on a broad range of endpoint devices. Progent has delivered remote consulting services for SharePoint and Exchange Server since their first releases and can assist your company to configure these flagship collaboration platforms to optimize the effectiveness 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 on top of 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, plus file and application sharing. Teams is closely integrated with Microsoft 365 and relies on Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Azure Entra (previously called Azure Active Directory) for supporting its full range of features. For additional information about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium, visit planning and deployment consulting for Microsoft Teams.

SharePoint uses web sites to facilitate collaboration and information sharing by providing policy-based delivery of data, workflow, and tools for searching through enterprise-wide information silos. SharePoint permits you to create protected web portals that allows remote workers to see and update consolidated corporate intelligence by means of Intranets (Wikis), Blogs, social web sites, and Web Parts. To learn about Progent's SharePoint expertise, go to SharePoint configuration and application 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. For details about Progent's Exchange consulting services, go to deployment consulting services for Microsoft Exchange.

OneDrive is Microsoft�s collaborative cloud-based storage service, comparable to GoogleDrive. Remote workers can save files to the OneDrive service, and co-workers can share them securely via a web browser. Provided with Office 365, OneDrive allows remote workers to co-author files. Revisions created offline are automatically synced when you reconnect to the Internet. To find out about Progent's support services for OneDrive, go to Onedrive configuration experts.

Cloud Integration for Teleworkers
Progent offers affordable online assistance for helping businesses to create, manage and repair cohesive network models that incorporate internal data centers, at-home workers, branches, plus public cloud services. Progent can provide expertise for all modes of public cloud service delivery such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Progent can help teleworkers fix issues with public cloud access, authentication, and cybersecurity.

Azure is a popular platform for cloud services that allows you to use infrastructure, servers, and key apps hosted on Microsoft's extensive cloud. Microsoft Azure includes more than 100 services services such as the ability to host Windows and Linux-based virtual machines, on-demand cloud storage, email and messaging, application development with Visual Studio, and data protection. Progent can assist you to deploy VMs on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate cloud-based storage on Azure Storage services, streamline identity control with Azure Active Directory, and design backup and restore solutions with Azure Backup. Progent can also show you how to establish protected connections to Azure for at-home workers by setting up and troubleshooting firewall appliances and VPN IPsec tunnels. To find out about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft Azure, refer to Microsoft Azure consulting.

Microsoft 365, previously called Office 365, is Microsoft's popular family of client productivity applications and cloud services offered on a subscription basis. Office applications and services are provided in a selection of plans intended for customers ranging from students and households to major enterprises. Progent can provide quick and easy online contact with consultants familiar with Microsoft 365-compatible devices running Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android technology. Progent's experts can help you to evaluate the various subscription bundles available for Microsoft 365 and deploy 365 applications for your teleworkers to achieve maximum business value. To find out about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft 365, visit Microsoft 365 consulting expertise.

Microsoft 365 Exchange Online is one of the most widely used cloud-based applications in the Microsoft 365 product line. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online offers the benefits of lower costs for physical infrastructure, simplified management, on-demand scaling, high availability, and additional advantages inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Microsoft 365 Exchange Online to operate seamlessly with local Exchange environments, allowing you to create hybrid cloud/onsite information systems. Progent's Exchange experts can provide occasional assistance to guide you past tough IT roadblocks and can also provide end-to-end project management outsourcing to ensure your teleworkers have easy and secure access to your Microsoft 365 Exchange Online deployment. To learn Progent's consulting services for Exchange Online, see Exchange Online integration and support expertise.

Amazon AWS is a trailblazer in the public cloud computing arena and is the industry's leading provider of cloud services. Progent offers rapid and affordable online contact with cloud connectivity consultants who can assist your business to design, deploy, maintain, and debug hybrid information networks that incorporate Amazon AWS cloud-based services with on-premises resources and with other public clouds like Microsoft Azure. Progent also offers access to Cisco-certified CCIE networking experts to assist you to create a high-availability network architecture so your employees have a productive computing environment whether they are working from your headquarters, a remote branch, at home, or on the road. For information about Progent's support services for Amazon AWS, refer to Amazon AWS integration expertise.

Google Cloud is a popular set of cloud services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can help your organization to expand your existing IT resources with the Google Cloud, and Progent's database consultants can help you make your key apps cloud friendly so your at-home workers can take full advantage of Google Cloud services. Progent can assist you to set up virtual machines on Google Cloud Compute Engine, plan an efficient storage solution with GCP Storage, and simplify access management for remote workers with Google Cloud Identity services. Progent's experts can also help your organization to utilize GCP's management technology to administer and track your Google Cloud environment. To learn, visit Google Cloud Platform integration expertise.

Help Desk Call Center Support for Remote Workers
An emergency, company-wide changeover to a telecommuter workforce, which might be the result of a pandemic or as an element of a business continuity process, can overstretch even the most efficient in-house Support Desk. Progent's Help Desk Call Center services make it possible for businesses of any size to outsource or augment their Call Center with Progent's online Technical Response Center (TRC) team.

• Progent's Standard Call Center services leverage Progent's extensive team of remote technical support experts combined with enterprise-class trouble ticketing and tracking software to provide an affordable, modern Help Desk. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services provide an end-to-end solution that addresses all aspects of online Level 1 PC support from service requests through trouble ticket generation, screen sharing, issue resolution, and reporting. A web-based User's Service Portal allows telecommuters to check or revise the status of their active trouble tickets, add information, and upload screenshots and attachments. Technical support services are provided at a substantial discount off Progent's normal Level 1 desktop service charges, and Progent offers optional fast escalation to Level 2 and Level 3 support experts to deal with complex problems. To find out more, visit Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services for small businesses.
• Progent's Help Desk Supplemental Service enables your company to expand your existing Call Center team by sharing delivery of Help Desk support seamlessly between your in-house support personnel and Progent's extensive roster of desktop support engineers and subject matter specialists. Progent's co-managed Help Desk service uses a co-sourcing support model utilizing the number one professional services automation platform for managing help requests and trouble tickets, establishing responsibility, monitoring progress, and generating reports. For information about how Progent's Call Desk Supplementation Services can help your business to deliver world-class technical support to your telecommuters, go to Progent's Support Desk supplementation Services.

Security and Compliance for Teleworkers
Work-from-Home (WFH) workers commonly use their own devices and often work in an unsecured physical area. This multiplies their susceptibility to malware attacks and requires careful configuration of corporate firewalls, AV tools, MFA-based identity verification, remote endpoint monitoring, thorough user training, and the development of policies based on best practices. Progent's seasoned roster of data security solutions experts can assist your business to design, deploy and manage an effective cybersecurity solution that guards critical information assets in environments that incorporate telecommuters.

Firewalls allow companies to build a network environment that can be safely utilized by local users as well as by teleworkers, mobile employees, suppliers, customers, and the public. Next-generation firewall devices permit you to assign and manage appropriate permissions to various groups of users and to scale your network and adjust your security profile as your company evolves and as cyber threats grow more complex. Progent supports both current and older firewall devices from all leading vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, Juniper, SonicWall and Fortinet. To learn more about Progent's firewall support services, visit firewall support expertise.

Online Endpoint Monitoring makes it easy to watch over the various devices utilized by at-home workers and either block or identify and respond to modern cyber attacks such as ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring services, a lightweight agent is put on each protected endpoint, monitoring all activity and using advanced machine learning and full execution context from SentinelOne to identify new threats on arrival. When an attack is spotted, ProSight ASM instantly isolates the targeted device from the network to contain the malware. Since the ProSight Active Security Monitoring software agent is self-contained, endpoint devices remain secure even if they are offline. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. For more information about ProSight Active Security Monitoring, see remote endpoint monitoring for remote workers.

Progent's Duo MFA Managed Services utilize Cisco's Duo technology to protect against compromised passwords by using two-factor authentication. Duo supports one-tap identity confirmation on iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. Using 2FA, whenever you log into a protected online account and give your password you are requested to confirm your identity on a device that only you have and that is accessed using a separate network channel. A wide selection of out-of-band devices can be used for this added means of ID validation such as an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware token, a landline phone, etc. You can designate several validation devices. To find out more about Duo two-factor identity authentication services, refer to Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for at-home workers.

Security Audits can assess 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 run online, automated security inventory scanning for quickly and affordably uncovering a wide variety of security weaknesses that can be found over the Internet. Progent's security assessment consulting services, which can be managed by security professionals with top certifications including CISM, CISSP, and GIAC, can assist your company to evaluate your operations and governance policies and assess your network architecture to allow you to design the highest level of protection for your telecommuters.

Horizon3.ai's NodeZero Pentest Platform is a leading-edge penetration test (pentest) product family that can deliver automated testing of your work-from-home connectivity solution as well as your internal and perimeter networks so you can uncover, prioritize, remediate, and confirm cybersecurity vulnerabilities before malicious hackers can exploit them. Progent can assist you to deploy NodeZero to perform thorough pentests of your perimeter and your internal network in order to determine your present security posture. Progent can also help you to harden your existing network security and can help you to plan and deploy a cohesive cybersecurity strategy that streamlines management and provides optimum protection for on-premises, cloud-based, remote, and perimeter IT resources. To find out more information about Progent's threat assessment solutions based on on NodeZero's pentest platform, visit Consulting Support for NodeZero's Pentest Products.

Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home Environment
To view or download a white paper about critical things to concentrate on for protecting a network that includes telecommuters, click:
Protecting a Work-From-Home Environment White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)

Data Protection Solutions for Telecommuters
Data Protection involves saving and recovering vital data so as to avoid data loss and minimize recovery time and effort in the event of storage failures due to hardware breakdowns, software glitches, user mistakes, cyber attack, or other causes. Dependable data protection strategies can be especially difficult to design and manage in hybrid environments that incorporate in-house data centers, public clouds, and an at-home workforce.

• Backup/Restore strategies for telecommuters must cover multiple types of personally owned endpoint devices. Progent can provide fast online help from consultants familiar with a broad range of platforms for protection Windows, Apple Mac and Linux/UNIX servers and desktops as well as notebooks, iOS and Android tablets and smartphones. Leading backup/recovery solutions supported by Progent's backup/recovery consultants include Barracuda Backup, Microsoft Azure Backup, DoubleTake Software, Acronis Backup and Recovery, Mozy, and Time Machine. To protect resources spread across a wide area network, Progent can provide ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a backup/recovery subscription service that uses cloud-based storage and features fine-grained restore and centralized management capabilities.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity (DR/BC) strategies typically anticipate circumstances that call for a rapid switch to an at-home workforce. Progent's expert disaster recovery planning consultants and business continuity planning specialists can assist you to create, document and test a DR/BC strategy that addresses the logistics of moving to an at-home workforce.

Unified Management for Teleworkers
Microsoft has renamed and rebundled its endpoint management products under the name Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which encompasses Intune for cloud-based management of mobile and remote endpoints and Configuration Manager for managing local computers. Endpoint Manager features a centralized environment for protecting corporate data by controlling local, mobile, and at-home endpoints.

Intune
Intune is part of Microsoft's Endpoint Management family that also features Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud service for managing and protecting remote devices and applications. Remote endpoint computers can be personally owned or company owned. IT administrators managing the enrolled endpoint computers of teleworkers can use Intune to provision and validate apps on devices, push patches and certificates, set up policies for permission to access data and networks, set passwords, create VPN connections, control how home-based workers share information, set up threat protection, verify security compliance, and erase sensitive data from missing, stolen or deactivated devices. Microsoft Intune works with iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS endpoints. To find out about Intune and how Progent can help your company to use this platform to administer the endpoint devices of your telecommuters, go to Intune telecommuter device management consultants.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced centralized Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform that helps network managers to keep offsite endpoints current and protected. Workspace ONE incorporates VMware AirWatch technology for centralized endpoint administration combined with VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery technology for identity control, app management, and setup management of endpoint computers. 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 service or as an on-site product via a perpetual license. Top features of VMware Workspace ONE include rapid remote deployment of out-of-the-box notebooks, quick onboarding of new employees, policy set up and enforcement for all classes of devices, aggregated reporting and analytics, email encryption, and tight integration with Microsoft apps and cloud services. For information about Progent's support services for VMware Workspace ONE, see VMware Workspace ONE remote device management expertise.

Contact Progent for At-Home Worker Support Services
To get in touch with Progent about building and managing a productive work-from-home solution for your Adelaide, South Australia organization, call 1-800-993-9400 or go to Contact Progent.