Rockville At Home Workforce Configuration Consulting Partner

Expanding your remote workforce may have a significant effect on IT infrastructure, security, and corporate workflows. Progent has two decades of background helping businesses of all sizes to plan, deploy, manage, optimize, and troubleshoot IT networks that incorporate work-from-home employees. Progent can assist your Rockville organization to select the right technologies and follow best practices in building and maintaining a safe virtual office solution for teleworkers that facilitates collaboration and delivers top business value. Progent offers support services that go from on demand expertise for getting you past occasional IT bottlenecks to comprehensive project management to help you successfully complete business-critical initiatives.

Progent can assist Rockville, Maryland organizations to succeed with any aspect of building a high-functioning work-at-home ecosystem by delivering infrastructure design and configuration services, VoIP PBX expertise, voice/video conferencing support, collaboration platform customization and training, public cloud integration, Help Desk services, endpoint security, backup/restore solutions, and unified management.

Network Infrastructure for Teleworkers
Setting up the network infrastructure needed for a remote workforce can be particularly complex if you have to accommodate a mix of personal hardware such as PCs and notebooks, routers, and wireless appliances from an assortment of vendors and with a mix of operating systems and firmware levels. Progent's background providing remote help for both outdated and current technologies in remote office solutions enables you to make cost-effective use of your existing infrastructure and provides you with fast access to expertise for making essential upgrades. Support services offered by Progent to help your company to create a productive work-at-home ecosystem include:

• Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology makes it possible to establish a safe connection for authenticated at-home workers to use IT assets located at your corporate datacenter or in a public cloud. Progent can assist you to deploy and manage VPN connections between your teleworkers and your key network resources by providing remote VPN configuration consulting. For organizations using Cisco's ASA firewalls, Progent's Cisco-certified ASA experts can assist your at-home workers to utilize Cisco's popular AnyConnect client software to provide secure VPN tunneling for a broad range of devices including Microsoft Windows, Mac, Apple iOS, Linux, and Android.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) products enable an at-home worker to see and use a remote PC's desktop. This technology gives IT managers significant control over the computing environment of at-home employees and offers them a familiar work experience. Progent's virtual desktop services include Windows Remote Desktop support and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI expertise.
• Routers connect home computer networks to the Internet and typically support VPN connections, home wireless networks, and firewall services. Progent can provide expert online consulting for deploying routers from all major vendors. See router configuration services from Cisco-certified consultants.
• Home Wireless networks, typically supporting an entire household and guests, are commonly utilized by telecommuters to access their router for work. This can create performance as well as cybersecurity issues. Progent can assist you to resolve these problems by delivering services like Cisco Aironet configuration consulting, Cisco-certified Meraki WiFi deployment expertise, and Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi access point integration help.
• Internet access solutions affect the speed and availability of connections between telecommuters and the company data center. Line-of-business applications might require backup Internet access in case the normal connection fails. Progent can provide guidance for selecting Internet service providers, choosing sensible bandwidth and data volume offerings, and setting up high-availability Internet access. Refer to Internet access solutions.

VoIP Integration for an At-Home Workforce
Expanding the company PBX environment to accommodate telecommuters is vital to maintaining an effective work-at-home solution. A variety of cloud-centric VoIP products are used by small and mid-size businesses to support remote users. Many larger organizations rely on Cisco's current or older platforms for IP voice solutions. Progent can help organizations of any size to design or tune a remote IP voice service that provides the flexibility, transparency and protection needed for teleworkers. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice consultants offer advanced support to assist businesses tune their current Cisco IP voice environments to support a growing remote workforce.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM or CUCM) extends enterprise telephony features to devices such as IP phones, media processing products, Voice over IP gateways, and multimedia software deployed across the network. Unified Communications Manager supports additional mixed media services like messaging, voice/video conferencing, and customer interaction networks. For more information about Progent's Unified Communications Manager expertise, see Cisco Unified CM consulting services.
• CallManager is Cisco's legacy call-processing agent and has been superseded by Cisco Unified CM. Progent can assist you to maintain your existing CallManager environment or migrate efficiently to Cisco's current IP telephony products. For details about Progent's expertise for Cisco CallManager and Cisco's other early VoIP platforms, visit CallManager consulting.
• Cisco IP Gateways enable integration with PSTN networks and with clients working beyond the corporate firewall like at-home workers. Progent can provide consulting expertise for Cisco's earlier generation IP gateways including the UC520, UC540 and UC560 series and for modern Cisco SIP gateways. See Cisco SIP gateway integration consulting.
• Other VoIP Products supported by Progent's consultants include Vonage, RingCentral and 8x8. Progent can assist you to enhance your wide area network infrastructure to support these VoIP solutions and deliver on-demand configuration and debugging services.

Video Conferencing for an At-Home Workforce
A broad range of video conferencing platforms from leading vendors support online discussions, video and voice conferencing, chat, and screen sharing for both onsite workers and telecommuters. Many organizations use a mix of conferencing products to meet the needs of their various partners and customers. Progent can help you to manage your existing conferencing ecosystem and enhance the engagement of your remote workforce.

• Skype for Business is Microsoft's popular communications platform that enables presence, IM, voice and video conferencing as well as the transparent integration of these functions within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 applications such as PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook. Progent offers the expertise of Microsoft-certified consultants who can help you to configure and manage Skype for Business client software to accommodate your remote employees. For details about Progent's consulting expertise for Skype for Business, visit Skype for Business integration experts.
• FaceTime is Apple's group video phone app for iOS, iPadOS, iPod and Mac devices. FaceTime works on Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Current editions of FaceTime allow as many as 32 simultaneous users for voice/video calls. For details about Progent's support expertise for FaceTime, refer to Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
• Webex Meeting Center supports online conferencing for most desktop or mobile devices. Delivered via Cisco's Webex Cloud, Webex services include sharing discrete content or computer screens, presentations that embed rich media including Microsoft PowerPoint, network-based capture, plus editing and playback for future reference and training. For details about Progent's support services for Webex as well as for additional video conferencing solutions from Cisco, see Progent's Webex Meeting Center support services.
• Teams is Microsoft's next-generation replacement for Skype for Business. Teams provides a hub for conferencing, contacts, and information with features such as IP voice and video conferencing, threaded chat, plus data sharing. To learn more about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft Teams as well as for other Microsoft 365 apps, see 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 conferencing platforms and help you 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 families, providing a powerful ecosystem of applications that create a cohesive user interface for exchanging data and ideas across a corporate network and on a broad selection of endpoints. Progent has delivered remote consulting services for Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange since their original publication and can assist your company to deploy 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 on top of Microsoft 365 and supports third-party cloud services to deliver real-time collaboration and communication. Developed as a replacement for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium can support chat, video meetings that include screen sharing, calling, cloud voicemail, group email, as well as file and application sharing. Teams is tightly 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 complete range of capabilities. To learn more about Progent's support services for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium, visit solution design and deployment consulting for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium.

SharePoint utilizes web sites to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing by offering policy-based access to data, business processes, and utilities for searching through company-wide business data. SharePoint enables you to build secure portals that enables at-home workforce to view and update consolidated business intelligence via Wikis, Blogs, social networking sites, and Web Parts. To find out about Progent's SharePoint support services, go to SharePoint integration 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 expertise, refer to deployment consulting for Exchange.

OneDrive is Microsoft�s collaborative cloud-based file hosting and synchronization service, similar to GoogleDrive. Remote workers can save files to OneDrive, and co-workers anywhere can access them securely via a web browser. Included with Microsoft 365, OneDrive enables at-home employees to jointly author files. Revisions created offline are automatically synced when you reconnect to the Internet. For details about Progent's consulting services for OneDrive, refer to Onedrive configuration experts.

Cloud Integration Services for Remote Workers
Progent can provide affordable remote support for helping organizations to create, maintain and repair integrated hybrid network architectures that combine internal data centers, telecommuters, branch offices, plus cloud services. Progent can provide expertise for all modes of cloud service such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service. Progent can help telecommuters resolve issues with cloud connectivity, authentication, and cybersecurity.

Microsoft Azure is a leading family of cloud services that allows you to utilize infrastructure, servers, and critical apps hosted on Microsoft's extensive cloud. Azure features over 100 services services such as hosting for Windows and Linux-based VMs, scalable cloud storage, messaging, application development with Visual Studio, and data protection. 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 AD, and design backup and recovery systems with Azure Backup. Progent's cloud experts can also help you establish protected connections to Azure for teleworkers by configuring and troubleshooting firewalls and VPN tunnels. For details about Progent's consulting services for Azure, see Microsoft Azure consulting services.

Microsoft 365, previously called Office 365, is Microsoft's popular family of business productivity software and cloud-based services available on a subscription basis. Office applications and services are provided in a variety of plans designed for customers ranging from individuals and small offices to major enterprises. Progent offers fast and easy remote access to consultants knowledgeable about Microsoft 365-compatible endpoints based on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android operating systems. Progent's experts can assist you to assess the numerous subscription bundles available for Microsoft 365 and deploy 365 apps for your at-home workers in a way that delivers maximum business value. To learn about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft 365, see Microsoft 365 consulting services.

Exchange Online is among the most popular cloud-based applications in the Microsoft 365 product suite. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online provides the advantages of lower costs for physical infrastructure, easier management, on-demand scaling, high availability, and other benefits associated with cloud computing. Microsoft has designed Exchange Online to run seamlessly with local deployments of Exchange, enabling customers to build hybrid information systems. Progent's certified Exchange consultants can provide occasional help to guide you past tough technical bottlenecks and also offer comprehensive project management outsourcing to ensure your telecommuters have convenient and safe access to your Exchange Online deployment. For information Progent's consulting services for Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, go to Microsoft 365 Exchange Online configuration and support consulting.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a trailblazer in the public cloud market and is the world's leading source of cloud services. Progent can provide quick and affordable online access to cloud integration consultants who can assist your business to design, deploy, manage, and troubleshoot hybrid IT networks that incorporate Amazon AWS cloud-based services with on-premises resources and with other public clouds such as Azure. Progent also can provide access to Cisco-certified CCIE networking experts to help you to build a high-uptime network architecture so your employees have a productive computing environment whether they are working from your headquarters, a remote branch, from home, or on the move. To find out about Progent's consulting services for Amazon AWS, go to Amazon AWS consulting support.

Google Cloud is a popular set of public cloud services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can assist your business to extend your current IT assets with the Google Cloud, and Progent's database consultants can help you make your critical applications cloud friendly so your remote workers can take full advantage of Google Cloud Platform services. Progent's consultants can assist you to deploy virtual machines on Google Cloud Compute Engine, plan a cost-effective storage system with GCP Storage, and simplify access control for remote workers with Google Cloud Identity services. Progent can also assist you to utilize GCP's unified management technology to control and track your Google Cloud ecosystem. For details, refer to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) integration support.

Help Desk Call Center Services for Telecommuters
A fast, organization-wide changeover to a telecommuter workforce, which might be the result of an epidemic or as a component of a disaster recovery/business continuity plan, can overstretch even a high-performing in-house Call Desk. Progent's Help Desk services make it possible for businesses of any size to outsource or augment their Help Desk with Progent's online Technical Response Center (TRC) team.

• Progent's Standard Call Desk services leverage Progent's nationwide team of online technical support experts combined with world-class ticketing and follow-up software to offer an affordable, state-of-the-art Help Desk Call Center. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services offer an end-to-end solution that addresses all facets of remote Level 1 desktop support from help requests through ticket creation, desktop sharing, issue resolution, and reporting. A browser-based User's Service Portal enables from-home workers to monitor or edit their active tickets, add information, and append screen captures and attachments. Technical support services are provided at a substantial discount off Progent's ordinary Level 1 desktop service charges, and Progent offers the option of fast escalation to Level 2 and Level 3 IT specialists to deal with advanced problems. For more information, visit Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services outsourcing for small and mid-size companies.
• Progent's Support Desk Augmentation Service enables your company to augment your existing Call Desk staff by sharing responsibilities for Help Desk services seamlessly between your in-house support organization and Progent's extensive team of PC support engineers and subject matter experts. Progent's co-managed Support Desk service uses a collaborative support solution based on the number one professional services automation (PSA) tool for handling help requests and trouble tickets, establishing responsibility, monitoring progress, and generating management reports. To learn how Progent's Call Center Supplementation Services can help your company to provide best-in-class IT support to your from-home workers, go to Progent's Call Desk augmentation Services.

Cybersecurity for Remote Workers
Work-from-Home (WFH) workers typically utilize their personal computers and often work in an unsecured physical environment. This situation increases their susceptibility to malware threats and calls for judicious configuration of firewalls, anti-malware tools, multi-factor authentication, remote monitoring, thorough user education, and the creation of security policies built on leading practices. Progent's seasoned roster of cybersecurity solutions experts can assist your business to plan, implement and manage an effective cybersecurity solution that guards critical IT assets in networks that incorporate at-home workers.

Firewalls enable you to create a network that can be securely accessed by local users and by teleworkers, mobile users, vendors, clients, and other stakeholders. Next-generation firewall devices permit you to assign and control appropriate permissions to various classes of users and to expand your IT network and adjust your cybersecurity posture as your business evolves and as network attacks grow increasingly complex. Progent works with both new and older firewall devices from all leading vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, Juniper, and Fortinet. For more information about Progent's firewall support expertise, visit firewall integration and support services.

Remote Endpoint Monitoring makes it easy to track the disparate computers utilized by an at-home workforce and either block or identify and mitigate the latest threats such as ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring services, a small-footprint agent is put on every protected endpoint, watching all activity and using advanced behavioral threat analysis from SentinelOne to identify new attacks on arrival. When a cyberattack is spotted, ProSight Active Security Monitoring immediately isolates the infected endpoint device from the corporate network to contain the malware. Since the ProSight Active Security Monitoring software agent is autonomous, endpoint devices remain protected even when they are disconnected from the Internet. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. To learn more about ProSight Active Security Monitoring, visit remote endpoint security monitoring for telecommuters.

Progent's Duo MFA Managed Services utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo enables single-tap identity confirmation on iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. With Duo 2FA, when you log into a protected application and enter your password you are requested to verify who you are on a device that only you have and that is accessed using a separate network channel. A wide selection of devices can be utilized as this added means of authentication such as an iPhone or Android or wearable, a hardware/software token, a landline telephone, etc. You may register several validation devices. For details about Duo two-factor identity validation services, go to Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for at-home workers.

Security Audits can assess the vulnerability of your network to all classes of external and internal security attacks for an environment that incorporates an at-home workforce. Progent can run online, automated cybersecurity inventory software for rapidly and economically uncovering a wide variety of security holes that can be surfaced via the Internet. Progent's security assessment experts, which can be managed by security professionals with top credentials such as CISM, CISSP, and GIAC, can help your company to evaluate your operations and governance policies and review your WAN architecture to enable you to implement the highest level of protection for your teleworkers.

Horizon3.ai's NodeZero Pentest Platform is a breakthrough penetration test (pentest) product family that supports autonomous testing of your work-from-home environment and your internal and perimeter networks to help you expose, prioritize, fix, and verify cybersecurity weaknesses before threat actors can exploit them. Progent can help you to deploy NodeZero to perform comprehensive pentests of your perimeter and your internal IT infrastructure so you can evaluate your current security profile. Progent can also assist you to harden your existing network security and can help you to plan and implement a cohesive cybersecurity ecosystem that streamlines management and provides optimum protection for on-prem, multi-cloud, at-home, and perimeter IT assets. To find out additional details about Progent's threat assessment services based on on NodeZero's penetration test platform, see Consulting Services for NodeZero's PEN Test Products.

Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home (WFH) Network
To read or download a white paper describing critical things to focus on for protecting an IT environment that supports telecommuters, click:
Securing a Work-From-Home (WFH) Network White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)

Data Protection Solutions for Telecommuters
Data Protection covers saving and restoring vital information in order to prevent data loss and minimize recovery time and effort in the event of storage failures resulting from hardware breakdowns, software glitches, user mistakes, cyber attack, or any other reason. Reliable data protection strategies can be particularly difficult to design and maintain in hybrid environments that combine private data centers, public clouds, and an at-home workforce.

• Backup/Recovery strategies for teleworkers must address diverse types of user-owned endpoint devices. Progent can provide quick online access to experts familiar with a broad range of platforms for protection Windows, Apple Mac and Linux/UNIX servers and desktops as well as notebooks, iPads and handhelds. Leading backup/recovery products supported by Progent's backup/recovery experts include Barracuda Backup, Azure Backup, Symantec Backup Exec, Acronis Backup and Recovery, Retrospect, and Time Machine. To back up data spread across a wide area network, Progent offers ProSight Data Protection Services, a managed backup/recovery service that utilizes cloud storage and features granular restore and unified management capabilities.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity (DR/BC) plans commonly anticipate circumstances that call for a temporary changeover to an at-home workforce. Progent's expert disaster recovery preparedness experts and business continuity specialists can assist you to produce, document and test a DR/BC strategy that addresses the logistics of switching to an at-home workforce.

Unified Management for At-Home Workers
Microsoft has rebranded and rebundled its endpoint management platforms under the name Endpoint Manager, which encompasses Intune for cloud-based management of mobile and remote endpoints and Configuration Manager for managing onsite endpoints. Endpoint Manager offers a centralized environment for protecting corporate information by controlling onsite, mobile, and at-home endpoints.

Intune
Intune is part of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also includes Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud service for managing and protecting off-premises devices and software. Managed endpoint computers can be personally owned or business owned. Network administrators managing the endpoint computers of telecommuters can use Intune to deploy and authenticate applications on managed devices, push patches and certificates, configure rules for accessing information and networks, manage passwords, create VPN connections, control how teleworkers share information, set up threat protection, verify security compliance, and wipe corporate data from missing, stolen or deactivated endpoint devices. Microsoft Intune can be used with iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS devices. To learn about Microsoft Intune and how Progent can assist your company to use Microsoft's Endpoint Management to administer the endpoint computers of your at-home workforce, see Intune teleworker device management consultants.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is a feature-rich centralized MDM platform that allows network managers to keep remote endpoints up to date and secure. Workspace ONE incorporates VMware AirWatch for unified endpoint management along with VMware's Horizon virtual application delivery platform for identity control, app management, and setup management of endpoints. Workspace ONE runs with devices based on Windows 10, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or popular distros of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud-based service or as an on-site product via a perpetual license. Top capabilities of Workspace ONE include rapid remote deployment of new laptops, quick onboarding of new employees, policy set up and enforcement for all categories of devices, aggregated reporting and analytics, an email encryption gateway, and tight integration with Microsoft apps and cloud-based products. For details about Progent's expertise for VMware Workspace ONE, refer to VMware Workspace ONE mobile endpoint management expertise.

Contact Progent for Telecommuter Expertise
To contact Progent about creating and managing an efficient telecommuter solution for your Rockville, Maryland company, phone 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.