Network Support for Mid-size Companies

Microsoft and Cisco Consulting Best Practices
Progent's team of Microsoft and Cisco Premier Certified consultants average more than a decade of hands-on professional background, at the forefront of network support, performing a wide variety of IT projects for a large mix of customers. Every Progent support professional shares a proven set of leading practices which are combined into company-wide best practices standards that Progent instills in its support staff. This ensures that you get not just world-class IT capability, but also a consultant with field-tested methods for using technical knowledge to resolve real-world network problems efficiently.

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent's team of IT consultants is made up of among the most experienced Microsoft and Cisco professionals in the industry. Averaging more than 10 years of professional experience per consultant, Progent's Microsoft Premier experts bring a tested set of methods for resolving network problems, planning projects, and delivering consulting services. The technical depth of Progent's engineering staff enables Progent to offer your business a consultant with tested ability and an effective technique for finding fast and inexpensive IT solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When appropriate, Progent utilizes a group approach to resolving the most difficult network issues. By aggregating hundreds of person-years of background from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier professionals, Progent can rapidly and efficiently handle even the most vexing problems. Working with hundreds of customers and performing thousands of sophisticated deployment and configuration projects annually gives Progent a unique view on which approaches work and which ones do not. Subtle software compatibility issues are a minefield for even the most skilled engineers unless they have a long and diverse history in real-world experience with a wide variety of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has incorporated the aggregate background of its senior consulting personnel to create an in-house, company-wide collection of leading practices intended to ensure fast, cost-effective solutions of technical issues and to track and optimize client approval. These methodologies include a powerful focus on client communication and services recording. Progent's Founder and CEO, Les Kent, has a 35-year track record of innovative technology integration, corporate management, sales and marketing, and operations. Progent's corporate-wide best practices are significantly influenced by Mr. Kent's experiences creating complex technical solutions while working as a system architect, software developer, task manager, deployment expert and troubleshooter.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As a certified partner with Microsoft and Cisco, Progent makes sure that staff consultants participate in ongoing product and methodology education that contains important lessons and methods for new product adoption that have been gleaned from the practice of hundreds of thousands of computer professionals around the world. This promotes continually more effective provision of services to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's advanced service documentation system provides detailed records for all delivered support. Every authorized Progent team member has full availability of the details of support delivered by any engineer to each client. This history of problems and resolutions, plus false alarms and miscues, is organized as an easily accessible internal database that enables Progent's support professionals to communicate their knowledge corporate-wide so that the general effectiveness of Progent's consulting services expands continuously. This database also reduces your reliance on a single engineer by allowing one Progent expert to take up where another stopped while saving hours spent getting ramped up on your network environment. An additional advantage of Progent's service documentation database is that your company can more smoothly take on IT management duties internally if it appears economical to do so, or you can migrate to another consulting company if you grow dissatisfied with Progent's service.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For major projects, Progent engineers use the Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology for providing service. MSF divides major initiatives into distinct and rational phases that minimize the chance of a project getting out of control. Every phase creates a strong base for the success of later phases. Planning and integration requirements are defined early in the project continuum so difficulties can be anticipated and dealt with before client producivity is disrupted. In addition, this prevents costs from skyrocketing due to unexpected crises during large scale roll outs. All project components are documented to create a comprehensive database of consulting services delivered and to help in continuing system support.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As certified support associates of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the world's largest technical knowledge bases and resources. Some of the most helpful support databases accessible by Progent's consultants are the industry leading practices incorporated into the various Management Packs created by Microsoft and other vendors for use in conjunction with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the proactive network monitoring software that is the foundation of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs (MPs) consist of custom built processing rules that will react to events, thresholds, and alerts monitored by Microsoft Operations Manager. MPs can also give valuable advice on how to deal with specific problems by programmatically finding relevant technical notes from the vast Microsoft Knowledge Base.