Southfield Telecommuters Connectivity Consulting Experts

Expanding your telecommuter workforce may have a significant effect on IT infrastructure, security/compliance, and company workflows. Progent has two decades of experience assisting businesses of all sizes to plan, deploy, administer, optimize, and debug IT environments that support a remote workforce. Progent can help your Southfield organization to pick the appropriate tools and adhere to leading practices in creating and operating a safe virtual office ecosystem for teleworkers that facilitates teamwork and delivers top value. Progent can provide support services that go from on demand expertise for getting you past occasional technical roadblocks to comprehensive project management or co-management to help you successfully complete business-critical tasks.

Progent's consultants can help Southfield, Michigan organizations to with any aspect of creating a high-functioning work-at-home environment by delivering network infrastructure configuration services, VoIP PBX expertise, voice/video conferencing integration, collaboration platform selection and deployment, cloud integration, Help Desk augmentation, endpoint security, backup/restore solutions, and centralized management.

Infrastructure for Telecommuters
Configuring the physical and software infrastructure needed to support a remote workforce can be particularly complex if you have to accommodate a combination of worker-owned hardware such as PCs and laptops, routers, and Wi-Fi APs from various vendors and with a mix of OS software and firmware levels. Progent's experience delivering remote support for both outdated and current technologies in virtual office venues enables you to make cost-effective use of your available infrastructure and provides you with ready access to expertise for making essential upgrades. Support services offered by Progent to assist your company to implement a productive work-at-home ecosystem include:

• Virtual Private Network (VPN) connectivity makes it possible to create a secure tunnel for authorized at-home workers to access IT resources located at your company data center or in the cloud. Progent's consultants can assist your company to deploy and maintain VPN connections between your teleworkers and your key network resources by providing online VPN integration consulting. For businesses with Cisco's ASA security appliances, Progent's Cisco ASA experts can assist your at-home workers to set up Cisco's AnyConnect client software for secure VPN connections for a wide selection of endpoint devices such as Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, and Android.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) platforms allow a telecommuter to view and interact with a remote computer's desktop. This provides IT managers substantial control over the digital ecosystem of at-home employees and ensures remote users a familiar work experience. Progent's VDI services include Windows Remote Desktop support and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI consulting.
• Routers connect at-home computer networks to the Internet and support VPN connections, home Wi-Fi networks, and firewall services. Progent offers top-tier online support for deploying routers from a range of manufacturers. See router integration services from Cisco-certified experts.
• Home Wi-Fi networks, typically shared by families and guests, are commonly used by at-home employees to access their router for work. This can create performance and cybersecurity issues. Progent can help businesses to mitigate these issues by delivering services like Aironet integration expertise, Cisco Meraki wireless deployment consulting, and Ubiquiti WiFi AP setup assistance.
• Internet connectivity solutions affect the performance and availability of connections between at-home workers and the company data center. Mission-critical applications might demand backup Internet connections in the event the primary connection breaks. Progent offers guidance for picking service providers, choosing sensible service bundles, and setting up high-availability Internet access. See Internet access integration services.

VoIP Integration for At-Home Workers
Expanding the business PBX system to accommodate telecommuters is critical to supporting a productive at-home workforce. A variety of cloud-centric digital PBX products are popular with small and mid-size businesses to support telecommuters. Many enterprises rely on Cisco's modern or legacy platforms for IP voice solutions. Progent can assist organizations of any size to design or tune a remote VoIP environment that provides the versatility, convenience and security required for remote users. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE IP Voice experts can provide high-level support to help businesses tune their existing Cisco VoIP environments to support an expanding at-home workforce.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM or CUCM) delivers advanced telephony features to devices like VoIP phones, media processing platforms, VoIP gateways, and multimedia apps deployed across the network. Unified Communications Manager manages other mixed media services like messaging, video conferencing, and team collaboration networks. For details about Progent's Cisco Unified CM or CUCM expertise, refer to Cisco Unified CM expertise.
• Cisco CallManager is Cisco's legacy call-processing software and has been superseded by Cisco Unified CM. Progent's consultants can assist your company to support your existing CallManager environment or migrate smoothly to Cisco's current IP telephony products. To learn about Progent's support services for Cisco CallManager and Cisco's other legacy VoIP products, refer to CallManager consulting services.
• Cisco IP Gateways enable connectivity with public telephony networks and with clients operating beyond the corporate firewall like telecommuters. Progent can provide expert support for Cisco's legacy IP gateways like the UC520, UC540 and UC560 product lines and for current Cisco Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) gateways. See Cisco SIP gateway integration expertise.
• Additional VoIP Products supported by Progent's consultants include Vonage, Intermedia Unite and 8x8. Progent can assist you to enhance your wide area network infrastructure to support these VoIP solutions and deliver online deployment and debugging services.

Voice/Video Conferencing for Telecommuters
A broad selection of voice/video conferencing products from leading technology companies enable virtual meetings, video conferencing, chat, and content sharing for both local users and at-home workers. Many companies utilize a mix of conferencing products to accommodate their various partners and clients. Progent can assist you to manage your existing conferencing ecosystem and enhance the productivity of your at-home workforce.

• Skype for Business is Microsoft's popular unified communications platform that supports presence, IM, audio and video calling and conferencing plus the seamless integration of these functions within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 applications such as PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. Progent can provide the expertise of Microsoft-certified specialists who can help your company to set up and manage Skype for Business clients to support your remote workforce. To learn more about Progent's consulting services for Skype for Business, refer to Skype for Business consulting services.
• FaceTime is Apple's multiuser video calling platform for iOS and macOS devices. FaceTime works on Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Current editions of FaceTime allow as many as 32 concurrent users for video calls. For details about Progent's support services for Apple FaceTime, see Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
• Webex Meeting Center provides remote conferencing for virtually all desktop or mobile devices. Offered via Cisco's Webex Cloud, Webex capabilities include sharing specific content or screens, presentations that incorporate rich media including Microsoft PowerPoint, session capture, plus revision and playback for future reference. For details about Progent's support expertise for Cisco Webex and for additional IP video 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 conferencing, threaded chat, plus data sharing. To learn more about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft Teams and for other Microsoft 365 apps, refer to Progent's Microsoft Teams consulting services.
• Other Conferencing Platforms supported by Progent include Google Meet, Amazon Chime, Zoom, and Slack. Progent can provide configuration and debugging expertise for these products and assist you to optimize your WAN architecture to host them.

Microsoft Integrated Collaboration Platforms for Telecommuters
Microsoft's collaboration products are closely integrated with Microsoft's popular Office and Microsoft 365 suites, offering a rich ecosystem of applications that deliver a cohesive user experience for sharing data and ideas across multiple sites and on a broad range of endpoints. Progent has delivered remote consulting services for SharePoint and Exchange since their first publication and can help your company to deploy these critical collaboration products to maximize 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 provide real-time collaboration. Developed as a substitute for Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams can support chat, audio/video meetings that include screen sharing, phone calls, cloud voicemail, group email, as well as file and application sharing. Teams is tightly integrated with Microsoft 365 and depends on Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Azure Entra (formerly called Azure Active Directory) for delivering its full range of capabilities. To learn more about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft Teams and Teams Premium, visit solution design and configuration expertise for Microsoft Teams.

SharePoint utilizes web entities to allow collaboration and knowledge delivery by offering policy-based delivery of content, workflow, and tools for looking through company-wide information silos. SharePoint allows you to create secure web portals that enables remote workers to view and update aggregated corporate intelligence by means of Intranets (Wikis), Blogs, social web sites, and Web Parts. For information about Progent's SharePoint expertise, go to SharePoint configuration 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 expertise, go to planning and configuration consulting services for Microsoft Exchange.

OneDrive is Microsoft�s shared cloud storage service, comparable to GoogleDrive. Remote workers can store files to the OneDrive service, and colleagues anywhere can access them safely via a web browser. Provided with Office 365, OneDrive enables at-home employees to co-edit documents. Edits created offline are automatically synced when you reconnect to the Internet. For details about Progent's expertise for OneDrive, visit Microsoft Onedrive integration consulting.

Cloud Integration for Teleworkers
Progent can provide advanced online support for helping organizations to create, manage and repair cohesive hybrid network architectures that include internal data centers, telecommuters, branch offices, plus public cloud resources. Progent can provide top-tier consultant for all modes of cloud service such as Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service. Progent can help teleworkers resolve problems with public cloud access, authentication, and cybersecurity.

Azure is a popular platform for public cloud services that allows you to use infrastructure, virtual servers, and key apps hosted on Microsoft's massive cloud. Azure offers more than 100 services services including hosting for Windows and Linux-powered VMs, on-demand cloud storage, messaging, app development with Visual Studio, and backup/restore. Progent can help you to set up VMs on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate storage on Azure Storage services, unify identity control with Azure AD, and design backup and recovery solutions with Azure Backup. Progent's cloud experts can also help you establish secure access to Azure for teleworkers by configuring and debugging firewall appliances and VPN tunnels. For information about Progent's consulting expertise for Azure, see Microsoft Azure consulting.

Microsoft 365, formerly called Office 365, is Microsoft's popular suite of business productivity applications and cloud services available by subscription. Microsoft apps and services are provided in a variety of bundles designed for customers ranging from individuals and small offices to major corporations. Progent offers fast and easy remote access to consultants knowledgeable about Microsoft 365-compatible clients based on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android technology. Progent's experts can assist you to evaluate the various subscription plans available for Microsoft 365 and deploy 365 apps for your telecommuters to achieve top business value. For information about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft 365, refer to Microsoft 365 consulting expertise.

Exchange Online is among the most widely used applications in Azure-hosted Microsoft 365 product line. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online provides the benefits of lower spending for data center infrastructure, simplified management, dynamic scaling, high reliability, and other benefits inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Microsoft 365 Exchange Online to run smoothly with on-premises deployments of Exchange, allowing customers to create hybrid networks. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide occasional assistance to guide you through challenging technical bottlenecks and can also provide comprehensive project management outsourcing to make sure your teleworkers have easy and secure access to your Exchange Online environment. For details Progent's support services for Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, refer to Microsoft 365 Exchange Online configuration and support expertise.

Amazon AWS is a pioneer in the public cloud computing arena and is the industry's top provider of cloud services. Progent offers fast and affordable online contact with cloud connectivity consultants who can help your organization to plan, deploy, manage, and troubleshoot hybrid IT networks that integrate Amazon AWS cloud services with on-premises data centers and with other public clouds such as Azure. Progent also offers the skills of Cisco-certified CCIE networking experts to assist you to build a high-uptime network model so your users have a consistent computing experience regardless of whether they are working from your headquarters, a remote branch, from home, or on the road. For details about Progent's expertise for Amazon AWS, visit Amazon AWS integration expertise.

Google Cloud (GCP) is a popular suite of public cloud services that provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can help your business to scale your current IT assets with the Google Cloud, and Progent's DBA consultants can show you how to make your critical applications cloud ready so your remote workers can benefit fully from Google Cloud Platform services. Progent can help your business to deploy VMs on Google Cloud Compute Engine, plan a cost-effective storage solution with Google Cloud Storage services, and streamline identity management for telecommuters with GCP Cloud Identity services. Progent can also assist you to utilize GCP's unified management technology to control and monitor your GCP ecosystem. To find out, visit Google Cloud Platform (GCP) consulting support.

Help Desk Call Center Support for Teleworkers
An emergency, organization-wide switchover to a teleworker workforce, which could be motivated by an epidemic or as a component of a business continuity preparedness plan, can overstretch even a high-performing in-house Call Center. Progent's Help Desk Call Center services allow organizations of any size to outsource or augment their Call Desk by using Progent's remote Technical Response Center services.

• Progent's Standard Help Desk Call Center support services utilize Progent's extensive network of online IT support specialists combined with world-class trouble ticketing and tracking technology to provide an economical, modern Help Desk. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services provide an end-to-end solution that addresses all aspects of remote Level 1 PC support from help requests to trouble ticket generation, desktop sharing, issue resolution, and reporting. A browser-based User's Service Portal allows telecommuters to monitor or edit the status of their active tickets, add details, and upload screenshots or attachments. Technical support services are delivered at a significant price reduction off Progent's normal Level 1 technical support charges, and Progent offers the option of fast hand-off to Level 2 and Level 3 support specialists to resolve complex issues. To find out more, refer to Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services for small companies.
• Progent's Help Desk Call Center Supplemental Service allows you to expand your existing Help Desk staff by sharing delivery of Help Desk support services transparently between your regular IT support organization and Progent's extensive pool of PC support technicians and subject matter experts. Progent's co-managed Help Desk service uses a collaborative support model based on the number one PSA tool for managing help requests and ticketing, establishing responsibility, monitoring progress, and generating management reports. For information about how Progent's Call Center Augmentation Services can enable your company to provide best-in-class IT support to your from-home workers, visit Progent's Call Center supplementation Services.

Security and Compliance for At-Home Workers
At-home staff members commonly utilize their personal devices and usually operate in an unsecured physical space. This situation increases their susceptibility to malware threats and calls for judicious configuration of corporate firewalls, AV tools, MFA-based identity verification, remote monitoring, intensive user education, and the development of policies built on best practices. Progent's veteran team of IT security solutions experts can help you to plan, deploy and manage a compliant security solution that guards vital information assets in networks that include at-home workers.

Firewalls enable companies to create a network environment that can be safely utilized by on-premises users as well as by teleworkers, mobile workers, vendors, clients, and the public. Next-generation firewall appliances permit you to assign and control appropriate access rights to various groups of users and to scale your network and adjust your security profile as your company evolves and as network attacks grow more complex. Progent supports both new and older firewall appliances from all major manufacturers like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, WatchGuard, Juniper, SonicWall and Fortinet. To learn more about Progent's firewall support expertise, refer to firewall support expertise.

Remote Endpoint Security Monitoring makes it easy to watch over the various computers utilized by at-home workers and either block or identify and mitigate the latest cyber attacks such as ransomware. With Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) services, a small-footprint agent is put on each secured endpoint device, monitoring all activity and utilizing advanced behavioral threat analysis from SentinelOne to identify new attacks at inception. When an attack is discovered, ProSight Active Security Monitoring instantly isolates the impacted device from the corporate network to contain the malware. Since the ProSight Active Security Monitoring agent is autonomous, endpoints stay secure even when they are offline. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. For details about ProSight Active Security Monitoring, go to remote endpoint monitoring for teleworkers.

Progent's Duo MFA Services utilize Cisco's Duo technology to protect against stolen passwords through the use of two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports single-tap identity confirmation on iOS, Google Android, and other personal devices. With Duo 2FA, when you sign into a protected application and enter your password you are requested to confirm your identity via a unit that only you have and that uses a different network channel. A broad selection of devices can be utilized as this second form of ID validation such as a smartphone or wearable, a hardware/software token, a landline phone, etc. You may register several verification devices. For more information about Duo identity authentication services, go to Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for at-home workers.

Security Audits can evaluate the exposure of your information system to all types of external and internal security attacks for an environment that incorporates teleworkers. Progent can deploy online, automated security analysis software for quickly and economically detecting a wide variety of security holes that can be surfaced via the Internet. Progent's security audit consulting services, which can be provided by network security experts with top credentials such as CISM, ISSAP, and GIAC, can help your company to evaluate your workflows and governance policies and assess your network architecture to allow you to design top-level security for your telecommuters.

Horizon3.ai's NodeZero Pentest Platform is a cutting-edge penetration test (pentest) product family that can deliver autonomous threat assessment of your at-home environment as well as your internal and perimeter networks so you can identify, prioritize, fix, and verify security weaknesses before malicious hackers can take advantage of them. Progent's pentest experts can help you to use NodeZero to carry out thorough pentests of your perimeter and your internal network so you can evaluate your current security profile. Progent can also help you to harden your network security and can help you to design and deploy a unified cybersecurity strategy that simplifies management and delivers maximum cyber defense for on-prem, multi-cloud, remote, and perimeter IT resources. To learn more details about Progent's vulnerability assessment services based on on NodeZero's penetration test platform, refer to Consulting Services for NodeZero's PEN Test Products.

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

Data Protection for Remote Workers
The field of Data Protection covers saving and restoring critical data in order to avoid data loss and minimize restoration time in case of storage system problems due to hardware breakdowns, programming glitches, human mistakes, cyber attack, or other causes. Dependable data protection strategies can be especially challenging to design and manage in hybrid networks that combine private data centers, cloud resources, and an at-home workforce.

• Backup/Restore solutions for telecommuters must cover multiple types of personally owned endpoints. Progent offers quick remote access to consultants familiar with a broad array of platforms for protection Windows, Apple Mac and Linux/UNIX servers and desktops as well as notebooks, iPads and smartphones. Leading backup/restore solutions maintained by Progent's backup/recovery consultants include Barracuda Backup, Microsoft Azure Backup, DoubleTake Software, CrashPlan, Retrospect, and Time Machine. To protect resources distributed throughout a hybrid network, Progent offers ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a managed backup/recovery service that utilizes cloud-based storage and features granular recovery and centralized management.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity strategies often anticipate circumstances that require a quick changeover to a work-at-home environment. Progent's senior disaster recovery planning consultants and business continuity planning specialists can help you to develop, document and test a DR/BC strategy that addresses the process of moving to telecommuting.

Unified Management for Remote Workers
Microsoft has rebranded and rebundled its endpoint management products under the name Endpoint Manager, which encompasses Intune for cloud-based management of remote devices and Configuration Manager for managing local endpoints. Microsoft Endpoint Manager provides a unified platform for safeguarding corporate data by managing on-premises, mobile, and home-based endpoints.

Intune
Intune is part of Microsoft's Endpoint Management family that also features Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud-based service for managing and protecting remote computers and applications. Managed endpoint computers can be user owned or company owned. IT administrators managing the enrolled endpoint computers of at-home workers can use Intune to provision and authenticate apps on devices, push updates and certificates, set up rules for permission to access information and resources, set passwords, establish VPN tunnels, control how telecommuters share information, set up threat protection, ensure security compliance, and erase sensitive data from missing, stolen or deactivated endpoint devices. Microsoft Intune runs with iOS/iPadOS, Android, Windows, and macOS/OS X endpoints. To learn about Microsoft Intune and how Progent can help your company to use Microsoft's Endpoint Management to administer the endpoint computers of your at-home workers, go to Intune telecommuter endpoint management consultants.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced unified Mobile Device Management product that helps network managers to keep off-premises endpoints up to date and secure. Workspace ONE uses VMware AirWatch for centralized endpoint management along with VMware's Horizon virtual application delivery platform for access control, application management, and setup management of endpoints. Workspace ONE runs with devices based on Windows 10, macOS, Apple iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or popular distributions of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is offered by subscription as a cloud service or as an on-site product through a perpetual license. Key capabilities of Workspace ONE include rapid over-the-air provisioning of out-of-the-box laptops, quick onboarding of new employees, policy setting and enforcement for all classes of endpoints, aggregated reporting and performance analytics, email encryption, and tight integration with Microsoft apps and cloud products. For information about Progent's expertise for VMware Workspace ONE, visit VMware Workspace ONE mobile endpoint management expertise.

Contact Progent for At-Home Worker Expertise
To get in touch with Progent about building and managing an efficient work-from-home environment for your Southfield, Michigan organization, call 1-800-993-9400 or go to Contact Progent.