Fort Wayne Offsite Workforce Connectivity Advisor

Expanding your telecommuter workforce can have a major impact on IT architecture, cybersecurity, and corporate culture. Progent has two decades of experience assisting businesses of all sizes to design, deploy, administer, optimize, and troubleshoot IT environments that support work-from-home employees. Progent can assist your Fort Wayne organization to pick the right technologies and adhere to best practices in building and operating a secure virtual office solution for teleworkers that promotes teamwork and returns maximum value. Progent offers support services that go from on demand expertise for getting you past occasional technical roadblocks to full project management or co-management to help you successfully complete business-critical tasks.

Progent's consultants can help Fort Wayne, Indiana organizations to with any facet of building a high-performing work-at-home ecosystem by providing infrastructure design and configuration services, VoIP PBX expertise, voice/video conferencing integration, collaboration platform selection and deployment, public cloud integration, Call Desk augmentation, security monitoring, data protection solutions, and streamlined management.

Network Infrastructure for Telecommuters
Setting up the network infrastructure needed to support an at-home workforce can be especially complicated if you must accommodate a combination of worker-owned equipment such as PCs and notebooks, Internet routers, and wireless appliances from an assortment of vendors and with a mix of operating systems and firmware releases. Progent's background delivering online help for both outdated as well as current technologies in virtual office venues enables you to make efficient use of your existing infrastructure and offers fast access to expertise for implement necessary updates. Support services offered by Progent to assist your company to implement a productive telecommuting ecosystem include:

• Virtual Private Network technology allows you to establish a secure tunnel for authenticated at-home employees to access IT resources situated at your company datacenter or in a public cloud. Progent can assist you to deploy and manage VPN access between your teleworkers and your various network resources by providing online VPN configuration support. For businesses with Cisco's ASA firewalls, Progent's Cisco-certified ASA experts can assist your remote workers to utilize Cisco's AnyConnect software to provide safe VPN tunneling for a wide selection of devices such as Windows, macOS, Apple iOS, Linux, and Android.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure platforms enable a teleworker to view and interact with a data center PC's desktop. This provides network managers significant control over the digital ecosystem of telecommuters and offers remote users a consistent and more productive experience. Progent's VDI services include Windows Remote Desktop support and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI consulting.
• Routers connect at-home networks to the Internet and support VPN connections, local Wi-Fi connectivity, and firewall services. Progent offers expert remote support for configuring home routers from a range of manufacturers. See router integration support from Cisco-certified experts.
• Home Wireless networks, often supporting the whole family and visitors, are frequently used by at-home employees to access their router for work. This can cause performance and security issues. Progent can help businesses to resolve these issues by providing services like Cisco Aironet configuration consulting, Cisco Meraki WiFi deployment consulting, and Ubiquiti wireless AP setup assistance.
• Internet access methods impact the speed and reliability of connections between telecommuters and the corporate network. Vital applications may demand redundant Internet connections in the event the primary connection fails. Progent offers guidance for identifying Internet service providers, picking appropriate service offerings, and setting up redundant Internet connections. Refer to Internet connectivity solutions.

IP Voice Solutions for Telecommuters
Expanding the corporate PBX environment to accommodate teleworkers is critical to maintaining a productive work-at-home solution. A variety of cloud-centric IP voice products are popular with SMBs to support remote users. Many larger organizations rely on Cisco's current or legacy platforms for IP voice management. Progent can assist organizations of any size to design or tune a remote VoIP service that provides the flexibility, convenience and security needed for at-home workers. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice experts offer high-level support to assist organizations optimize their current Cisco IP voice environments to handle a growing remote workforce.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM or CUCM) extends high-end IP telephony capabilities to devices such as IP phones, media processing platforms, Voice over IP gateways, and mixed media applications used throughout the network. CUCM supports other combined media services like messaging, voice/video conferencing, and team interaction networks. For details about Progent's CUCM expertise, visit Cisco Unified CM consultants.
• Cisco CallManager is Cisco's earlier call-processing software and has been superseded by Cisco Unified CM or CUCM. Progent can help you to maintain your current CallManager deployment or upgrade smoothly to Cisco's modern IP telephony products. To learn about Progent's support services for CallManager and Cisco's other legacy VoIP products, see Cisco CallManager consulting services.
• Cisco IP Gateways provide integration with PSTN networks and with users operating outside the corporate perimeter like telecommuters. Progent can provide expert support for Cisco's legacy IP gateways like the UC520, UC540 and UC560 series as well as for modern Cisco SIP gateways. See Cisco SIP gateway integration expertise.
• Other VoIP Products supported by Progent include Vonage, Intermedia Unite and 8x8. Progent can assist you to update your WAN infrastructure to work with these solutions and provide as-needed deployment and debugging expertise.

Video Conferencing for Telecommuters
A wide selection of voice/video conferencing products from major vendors enable online discussions, video conferencing, chat sessions, and screen/content sharing for both local workers and telecommuters. Many organizations utilize a mix of products to meet the needs of their different partners and customers. Progent can help your organization to manage your existing voice/video conferencing environment and enhance the productivity of your at-home workforce.

• Skype for Business is Microsoft's leading communications platform that enables presence, IM, voice and video calling and conferencing plus the transparent integration of these capabilities within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 productivity software such as PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. Progent can provide the expertise of Microsoft-certified consultants who can help you to deploy and maintain Skype for Business clients to accommodate your at-home employees. For details about Progent's support services for Skype for Business, see Skype for Business integration experts.
• FaceTime is Apple's group video calling app for iOS, iPadOS, iPod and Mac computers and smartphones. FaceTime runs over Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Newer versions of FaceTime allow as many as 32 concurrent users for video sessions. To learn more about Progent's support services for FaceTime, see Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
• Webex Meeting Center provides remote conferencing for most computing devices. Offered via Cisco's Webex Cloud platform, Webex capabilities include sharing specific content or computer screens, presentations that incorporate rich media including Microsoft PowerPoint and Flash videos, session capture, plus revision and playback for future reference and training. For details about Progent's consulting services for Webex and for other video conferencing solutions from Cisco, refer to Progent's Webex Meeting Center support services.
• Teams is Microsoft's next-generation replacement for Skype for Business. Teams provides a hub for conferencing, contacts, and content with features such as IP voice and video conferencing, persistent threaded 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 Voice/Video Conferencing Apps supported by Progent's conferencing experts include Google Meet, Amazon Chime, Zoom, and Slack. Progent can deliver configuration and troubleshooting expertise for these products and help your business to tune your WAN infrastructure to run them.

Microsoft Collaboration Platforms for Remote Workers
Microsoft's collaboration products are tightly integrated with Microsoft's familiar Office and Microsoft 365 suites, offering a powerful ecosystem of applications that create a consistent user experience for exchanging information throughout a corporate network and on a broad selection of endpoints. Progent has delivered remote consulting support for SharePoint and Exchange Server since their original releases and can help your company to configure these flagship collaboration platforms to optimize the productivity 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 replacement for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium can enable chat, audio/video meetings with screen sharing, calling, 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 Microsoft Entra (formerly called Azure Active Directory) for delivering its complete range of capabilities. For details about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium, visit solution design and deployment consulting for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium.

SharePoint uses web sites to enable collaboration and information sharing by offering policy-based access to content, workflow, and tools for looking through enterprise-wide business data. SharePoint allows you to create protected web portals that allows at-home workers to see and edit consolidated corporate intelligence by means of Wikis, Blogs, social networking sites, and Web Parts (Widgets). To learn about Progent's SharePoint expertise, go to 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. For information about Progent's Exchange support services, refer to deployment consulting services for Exchange Server.

OneDrive is Microsoft�s collaborative cloud-based storage service, comparable to GoogleDrive. Remote users can store files to the OneDrive service, and co-workers anywhere can access them safely via a web browser. Provided with Office 365, OneDrive allows remote workers to jointly author files. Edits made offline are automatically uploaded when you go back online. To find out about Progent's expertise for Microsoft OneDrive, refer to Microsoft Onedrive configuration consulting.

Cloud Integration Services for At-Home Workers
Progent offers advanced online assistance for helping organizations to create, manage and repair cohesive hybrid network models that incorporate physical data centers, at-home workers, branches, and public cloud services. Progent can provide expertise for all types of cloud service including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service. Progent can help telecommuters resolve problems with public cloud connectivity, authentication, and cybersecurity.

Microsoft Azure is a leading platform for cloud software and services that allows you to utilize IT infrastructure, servers, and critical apps hosted on Microsoft's massive cloud. Microsoft Azure includes more than one hundred services services including the ability to host Windows and Linux-based VMs, on-demand cloud storage, email and messaging, application development with Visual Studio, and backup/restore. Progent can help you to set up virtual machines on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate cloud-based storage on Azure Storage services, unify identity management with Azure Active Directory, and plan data backup and recovery systems with Azure Backup. Progent's cloud experts can also show you how to establish secure connections to Azure for remote workers by setting up and troubleshooting firewall appliances and VPN IPsec tunnels. To learn about Progent's expertise for Microsoft Azure, see Microsoft Azure consulting.

Microsoft 365, previously called Office 365, is Microsoft's popular suite of business productivity applications and cloud-based services offered on a subscription basis. Microsoft applications and cloud services are provided in a variety of plans intended for customers ranging from individuals and households to major enterprises. Progent offers quick and affordable remote access to experts knowledgeable about Microsoft 365-compatible clients running Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android operating systems. Progent's experts can help your business to evaluate the various subscription plans offered with Microsoft 365 and deploy 365 apps for your teleworkers in a way that delivers maximum business value. To learn about Progent's expertise for Microsoft 365, visit Microsoft 365 integration services.

Exchange Online is among the most widely used cloud-based applications in Azure-hosted Microsoft 365 product suite. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online provides the advantages of lower spending for physical infrastructure, easier management, dynamic scaling, high availability, and additional advantages inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Microsoft 365 Exchange Online to run transparently with on-premises Exchange environments, enabling customers to build hybrid networks. Progent's certified Exchange consultants can provide occasional assistance to guide you through challenging technical bottlenecks and can also provide comprehensive project management outsourcing to ensure your at-home workers have easy and secure access to your Exchange Online environment. For information Progent's consulting services for Exchange Online, see Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and troubleshooting expertise.

Amazon AWS is a pioneer in the public cloud computing market and is the world's leading source of cloud-based services. Progent offers fast and economical online access to cloud connectivity consultants who can help your organization to design, implement, maintain, and troubleshoot hybrid IT networks that integrate Amazon AWS cloud-based services with local data centers and with other popular cloud platforms such as Azure. Progent also can provide access to Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to help your company to build a high-availability network architecture so your users have a productive computing experience regardless of whether they are working from your headquarters, a remote branch, from home, or on the move. For information about Progent's consulting services for Amazon AWS, see Amazon AWS integration expertise.

Google Cloud is a popular suite of public cloud services that provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco experts can assist you to extend your existing IT assets with the Google Cloud Platform, and Progent's DBA experts can help you make your key applications cloud ready so your at-home workers can take full advantage of Google Cloud Platform services. Progent's consultants can help your organization to set up VMs on Google Cloud Compute Engine, plan a cost-effective storage system with Google Cloud Storage, and streamline access management for at-home workers with Google Cloud Identity services. Progent's consultants can also help your organization to use GCP's management tools to administer and track your Google Cloud ecosystem. For information, refer to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) consulting expertise.

Help Desk Services for Teleworkers
A rapid, organization-wide changeover to a teleworker workforce, which might be motivated by a pandemic or as a component of a disaster recovery/business continuity preparedness plan, can overwhelm even the most efficient internal Call Center. Progent's Help Desk Call Center services make it possible for businesses of any size to outsource or supplement their Help Desk by using Progent's online Technical Response Center (TRC) services.

• Progent's Standard Call Center support services utilize Progent's nationwide network of online IT support specialists along with enterprise-class trouble ticketing and tracking technology to provide an affordable, state-of-the-art Help Desk Call Center. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services offer an end-to-end solution that handles all aspects of remote Level 1 desktop support from initial help requests to ticket generation, desktop sharing, issue resolution, and reporting. A browser-based User's Service Portal allows teleworkers to track or revise the status of their active tickets, add information, and upload screenshots or attachments. Technical support services are delivered at a substantial discount off Progent's ordinary Level 1 desktop service charges, and Progent offers optional fast hand-off to Level 2 and Level 3 support specialists to deal with advanced problems. For more information, visit Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services outsourcing for small and mid-size businesses.
• Progent's Call Center Supplemental Service allows your company to augment your existing Help Desk team by splitting responsibilities for Support Desk support seamlessly between your regular IT support personnel and Progent's nationwide roster of desktop support engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's shared Call Center service uses a collaborative support model based on the leading PSA platform for managing help requests and ticketing, establishing responsibility, tracking progress, and generating reports. To find out how Progent's Call Desk Augmentation Services can help your business to deliver world-class IT support to your at-home workforce, see Progent's Support Desk supplementation Services.

Security and Compliance for Telecommuters
Work-from-Home staff members typically use their own computing devices and usually work in an unsecured physical environment. This situation increases their susceptibility to malware threats and calls for judicious deployment of corporate firewalls, AV tools, multi-factor authentication, remote monitoring, intensive end-user education, and the development of security policies based on best practices. Progent's veteran roster of cybersecurity support experts can help you to plan, implement and manage an effective security solution that guards vital information assets in networks that include telecommuters.

Firewalls allow companies to create a network that can be securely utilized by on-premises users and by telecommuters, mobile users, vendors, clients, and other stakeholders. Next-generation firewall appliances allow you to assign and control different permissions to different classes of users and to expand your network and modify your cybersecurity posture as your company evolves and as network attacks become more sophisticated. Progent works with both new and older security appliances from all major manufacturers including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, WatchGuard, Juniper, and Fortinet. To learn more about Progent's firewall integration expertise, go to firewall configuration and support services.

Remote Endpoint Monitoring makes it easy to track the disparate computers used by telecommuters and either reject or identify and respond to modern threats like ransomware. With Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring services, a lightweight agent is put on every protected endpoint device, watching all activity and using advanced behavioral threat analysis from SentinelOne to detect zero-day attacks at inception. When an attack is spotted, ProSight Active Security Monitoring instantly disconnects the infected device from the corporate network to contain the threat. Since the ProSight Active Security Monitoring agent is autonomous, endpoints remain protected even if they are disconnected from the Internet. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. To learn more about ProSight Active Security Monitoring, see remote endpoint monitoring for at-home workers.

Progent's Duo MFA Managed Services incorporate Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports one-tap identity confirmation with iOS, Android, and other personal devices. With 2FA, when you log into a protected online account and give your password you are asked to confirm your identity via a unit that only you possess and that uses a different network channel. A wide selection of out-of-band devices can be utilized as this added form of authentication such as an iPhone or Android or wearable, a hardware token, a landline phone, etc. You can register multiple verification devices. For details about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, go to Duo MFA two-factor authentication (2FA) services for remote workers.

Security Audits can assess the vulnerability of your network to all classes of outside and internal security attacks for an environment that includes at-home workers. Progent can run remote, automated cybersecurity analysis software for rapidly and economically uncovering a broad range of security holes that can be surfaced over the Internet. Progent's endpoint security audit consulting services, which can be provided by data security experts with advanced certifications such as CISM, CISSP, and GIAC, can assist you to audit your procedures and policies and assess your network infrastructure to enable you to implement top-level protection for your an at-home workforce.

Horizon3.ai's NodeZero PEN Testing Platform is a leading-edge penetration test (pentest) product family that supports autonomous threat assessment of your work-from-home environment and your internal and perimeter networks to help you uncover, rank, remediate, and confirm cybersecurity weaknesses before threat actors can exploit them. Progent's pentest experts can assist you to deploy NodeZero to perform comprehensive pentests of your perimeter and your internal IT infrastructure so you can evaluate your present security profile. Progent can also assist you to harden your existing network security and can assist you to design and deploy a unified cybersecurity ecosystem that streamlines management and delivers maximum cyber defense for on-prem, multi-cloud, at-home, and perimeter IT assets. To learn additional information about Progent's vulnerability analysis services powered by on NodeZero's PEN test products, see Consulting Support for NodeZero's Pentest Products.

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

Data Protection for Teleworkers
Data Protection involves saving and recovering vital data so as to prevent data loss and reduce recovery time and effort in the event of storage problems resulting from hardware issues, software glitches, user mistakes, cyber attack, or any other reason. Reliable data protection solutions can be especially difficult to architect and manage in hybrid networks that combine private data centers, cloud resources, and an at-home workforce.

• Backup/Restore solutions for remote workers must cover multiple kinds of personally owned endpoint devices. Progent can provide fast remote help from consultants knowledgeable about a broad range of platforms for protection Windows, Apple and Linux/UNIX powered servers and desktops as well as notebooks, tablets and handhelds. Popular backup/recovery products supported by Progent's backup/recovery experts include Barracuda Backup, Azure Backup, DoubleTake Software, CrashPlan, Retrospect, and Time Machine. To back up resources distributed across a hybrid network, Progent offers ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a backup/recovery subscription service that utilizes cloud-based storage and includes fine-grained recovery and centralized management capabilities.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity plans often envision scenarios that require a temporary switch to an at-home workforce. Progent's expert disaster recovery planning consultants and business continuity planning consultants can help your business to produce, document and validate a DR/BC strategy that addresses the logistics of moving to an at-home workforce.

Unified Management for Remote Workers
Microsoft has rebranded 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 onsite computers. Endpoint Manager offers a centralized environment for safeguarding corporate data by controlling local, mobile, and home-based endpoints.

Microsoft Intune
Intune is part of Microsoft's Endpoint Management family that also features Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud-based service for managing and securing remote devices and software. Managed endpoint computers can be user owned or company owned. IT administrators managing the endpoint computers of telecommuters can utilize Intune to deploy and validate applications on managed devices, push updates and certificates, configure policies for accessing information and networks, set passwords, establish VPN connections, determine how home-based workers share data, set up threat defense, ensure security compliance, and delete corporate data from lost, stolen or decommissioned devices. Intune works with iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS/OS X computers. To find out about Intune and how Progent can help you to use this platform to manage the devices of your teleworkers, go to Intune mobile device management consultants.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is a feature-rich centralized MDM product that helps network administrators to keep remote endpoints up to date and secure. Workspace ONE incorporates VMware AirWatch for centralized endpoint management combined with VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery technology for authorization control, app management, and setup management of endpoint computers. Workspace ONE operates with devices powered by Windows 10, macOS, iOS, Google Android, Chrome OS, or popular distros of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud-based service or as an on-premises product through a perpetual license. Top capabilities of Workspace ONE include fast remote provisioning of out-of-the-box notebooks, quick onboarding of new users, policy setting and enforcement for all categories of devices, unifies reporting and performance analytics, email encryption, and integration with Microsoft apps and cloud products. To find out about Progent's support services for VMware Workspace ONE, refer to VMware Workspace ONE mobile endpoint management consultants.

Contact Progent for At-Home Worker Expertise
To contact Progent about creating and managing an efficient telecommuter environment for your Fort Wayne, Indiana company, call 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.