Cloud Integration Services

Progent has assisted organizations of all sizes to design, configure, and manage networks based on a variety of hybrid models that combine Azure cloud-based infrastructure and services with physical datacenters, private clouds, and additional public clouds. Progent is unique in the ability to offer rapid and affordable online help from IT consulting experts to assist you to assess the possible benefits of different Azure services for your particular organization. Progent's virtualization experts can help you to configure VMs on Azure Virtual Machines. Progent's certified information security experts can help you unify identity management using Microsoft Entra ID (formerly called Azure Active Directory). Progent's data protection experts can help you to plan backup and restore systems based on Azure Backup. Also, Progent's VPN and security appliance specialists can help you set up secure and dependable connections to Azure.

About Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, previously branded Windows Azure, is a popular public cloud service that lets you utilize IT infrastructure, virtual servers, and key application software hosted on Microsoft's massive public cloud. Microsoft Azure supports dozens of cloud-centric services such as the ability to host Windows and Linux-powered virtual machines (VMs), scalable cloud storage, unified messaging, development, and data backup. Microsoft Azure products are offered on a subscription basis and allocated as-needed, so organizations can immediately expand or reduce processing and storage capacity. Since you are billed only for the capacity you need, efficiency is very high, which is one of the major attractions of cloud computing.

Popular Microsoft Azure Cloud Services
Microsoft Azure provides more than 60 IaaS and PaaS options and hundreds of services. This expanding family of integrated cloud services covers virtually all areas of information technology including processing, data and storage, networking, management, security, web hosting, mobility, business applications, and software development. Other popular products like Office 365 Exchange depend Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. (See Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online integration and troubleshooting expertise.)

Major Azure products and services for which Progent can deliver advanced expertise and troubleshooting services include:

Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines makes it easy for organizations to provision, scale and manage virtual machines on the Azure cloud. Your Azure Storage account provides storage for the OS disk and associated data disks. Azure Virtual Machines supports Microsoft Windows Server, major distros of Linux, SAP, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server, and additional leading platforms. Different categories of virtual machines (VMs) are offered and priced according to processor performance, memory capacity, and I/O throughput. You can access Microsoft Azure VMs via RDP. The Platform-as-a-Service features of Azure Virtual Machines allows organizations to run Windows workloads such as SQL Server, Exchange Server, and Microsoft Dynamics as well as leading Linux distributions like Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu, and RancherOS.

The enhanced deployment model for Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines, referred to as Azure Resource Manager, replaces what is now known as Azure Classic and offers streamlined virtual machine management by supporting VM groups with a shared lifecycle. Previously, Microsoft Azure services for deploying, sizing, and administering VMs had to be handled individually. Resource Manager provisioning options include a cloud portal, Azure Resource Manager template, Azure PowerShell, and Azure Tools for Visual Studio. Progent's Azure specialists can help you build and administer Azure environments quickly and affordably by providing expertise with these tools for managing Azure Virtual Machines.

Azure Storage offers dynamic scale and automatic load balancing for primary storage hosted on Azure. An Azure General Purpose Storage account provides Azure subscribers access to storage services for Blobs, Tables, Files, Queues, and VM drives. Every storage account has a 500 TB capacity limit. For faster throughput, you can subscribe to Azure's Premium storage class and operate VM workloads on solid state disks (SSDs).

Azure Blob storage for General Purpose Storage accounts is intended for massive amounts of unstructured object data like documents, social media, backups, web pages, log files and Big Data. Azure Blobs are managed as containers, making it easy to assign policies to groups of objects. To export blobs that are too massive to upload over an Internet connection, you can ship a drive to Microsoft.

A separate class of Blob Storage is intended for apps that only require block or append blob storage. You can specify Hot or Cool access characteristics for block and append blobs (but not for page blobs). Being able to classify access characteristics in Microsoft Azure storage accounts allows you to achieve the right trade-off between price and performance.

Table storage is affordably-priced cloud storage for developers creating non-relational metadata such as contact books, device information, or web applications. Azure Table Storage works with the OData protocol for querying and allows JSON and XMLd AtomPub formats. Queue storage helps in the creation of messaging apps by supporting asynchronous exchanges between application components that span cloud-based and physical environments. Azure File storage accommodates SMB file shares, which simplifies moving legacy applications to the Azure cloud.

Microsoft Entra, previously called Azure Active Directory, is a cloud directory and identity management service that enables password synchronization and single sign-on spanning local and cloud-hosted environments. Microsoft Entra ID is built into Microsoft 365, Salesforce.com, DropBox, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, and many other popular applications. Features include multi-factor authentication, endpoint registration, self-service password management across cloud-hosted and on-premises systems, group management, role-based access control, auditing, security monitoring and reporting, and alerts. Azure Entra ID works transparently with your Windows Server Active Directory to make it simple to unify on-premises and cloud authentication. Azure provides advanced reliability by locating your directories on a minimum of three geo-dispersed datacenters.

The Microsoft Azure Entra Connect utility has superseded Windows Azure DirSync, Azure AD Sync and Forefront Identity Manager as the recommended means to integrate on-premises directories and synchronize identity information with Active Directory, Office 365 and SaaS cloud-hosted applications.

Azure Backup is an automated backup service that simplifies offsite backup of local, cloud, and hybrid cloud/local environments. Three copies of backup data are stored in the same Azure datacenter, and three more copies of target data can optionally be protected at a geographically separate Azure site. Microsoft offers SLAs for 99.9% availability, and retention in Azure can be up to 99 years. You can schedule backups for daily, monthly, weekly, and yearly periods, and recovery time is faster and less expensive than old-style tape technology. Backups are encrypted before to transmission over a protected connection to Azure, and backups are stored encrypted. The encryption key is stored and managed locally for enhanced compliance. Other features include throttling to take advantage of low-traffic periods, data compression to improve performance and reduced storage costs, and incremental backups to conserve bandwidth. Azure Import/Export allows you to perform your initial backup on-premises and send a physical storage device to the nearest Azure facility.

Azure Backup integrates closely with System Center Data Protection Manager to offer specialized support for Microsoft's mission-critical workloads including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Windows Hyper-V. System Center Data Protection Manager works seamlessly with Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) to protect virtual machines without disrupting their operation. SCDPM also offers platform-specific granular restore capability such as mailbox recovery for Exchange, database-level recovery for Microsoft SQL Server, and Item Level Recovery for SharePoint Server. Azure Backup environments integrated with SCDPM can be monitored with System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to watch over system health, performance, and efficiency.

How Progent's Experts Can Help You with Microsoft Azure Integration
If you want to migrate your IT infrastructure to the Microsoft Azure cloud or build a hybrid ecosystem that integrates local and cloud-based resources, Progent can help you assess the benefits of the Azure line of products and services compared to other public clouds or different networking strategies like using colo centers. Progent can assist your business with any and every stage of Azure integration such as ROI analysis, system planning, pilot testing, implementation, centralized administration, performance optimization, software license control, disaster recovery planning, cybersecurity planning, and compliance validation.

Progent can help you to determine which of your mission-critical applications are appropriate for Microsoft Azure and help ensure your legacy applications are cloud ready. Progent can provide cost-effective on-demand expertise to help you quickly deal with occasional technical hurdles or Progent can deliver end-to-end project management consulting expertise to make sure your Microsoft Azure integration initiative is successfully completed on time and on budget.

For setting up centralized administration of a hybrid environment that includes Microsoft Azure services, Progent offers Microsoft System Center consulting services including SCDPM expertise, System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) support services, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) expertise, System Center Virtual Machine Manager hybrid cloud management consulting, and Microsoft Intune mobile device management consulting.

Cloud-integrated solutions have to furnish a secure, easy-to-manage, user-friendly, and reliable environment for user to connect to both on-premises cloud-based resources. Progent has extensive experience configuring VPN tunnels and implementing or debugging firewalls to link to Azure. Progent offers rapid online access to Cisco-certified CCIE network consultants and to firewall experts certified by leading vendors such as Symantec, Barracuda, and WatchGuard to assist you to configure or troubleshoot firewalls for connecting your local network with Azure. Progent also provides mobility support by providing the help of iPhone and iPad technology experts and Android connectivity experts to assist you to configure and administer handheld devices that utilize your Microsoft Azure environment. If you come up against problems with your Microsoft Azure solution, Progent has extensive experience teaming with Microsoft's support personnel to fix problems with Azure.

Some examples of online consulting services Progent has delivered to organizations to help them build and manage their Azure-connected information systems include:

• Set up and troubleshoot IPsec VPN connections forremote connectivity to Microsoft Azure
• Plan or review the system architecture of hybrid Azure/on-premises environments
• Assemble VM images for Windows or Linux technology to be located on Azure
• Implement Microsoft Entra (Azure Active Directory), Entra Connect (Azure AD Connect), and Federation Services
• Design and test backup vaults that utilize Azure Backup services
• Prep and troubleshoot virtual hard disks for Microsoft Azure
• Define and deploy security policies
• Identify and resolve issues involving IP addresses
• Resolve synchronization problems associated with Office 365
• Set up, update, and debug firewalls from Cisco, Barracuda, WatchGuard and other security appliance providers
• Configure Cisco AnyConnect technology for remote access to Microsoft Azure products and services
• Streamline software license administration
• Resolve issues with certificate management
• Select and configure centralized management, monitoring and reporting solutions that span hybrid environments
• Implement System Center Configuration Manager to deploy applications
• Configure SCVMM locally and on Azure
• Design and configure hybrid Exchange solutions
• Tune query speed on SQL Server running on Azure
• Migrate Citrix XenDesktop to the Azure cloud
• troubleshoot PowerShell problems for loading modules to Azure

Additional Cloud Platforms Supported by Progent's Cloud Integration Experts
Services offered on public clouds are growing rapidly in volume and complexity. Choosing the best options is increasingly difficult. The majority of large businesses maintain hybrid networks that utilize more than one public cloud and at the same time manage on-premises datacenters. Office 365 line of apps, such as Exchange Online and Skype for Business Online, depend on the Azure cloud and provide alternative paths to Azure's Infrastructure-as-a-Service products. Progent's cloud experts can help your organization to assess the potential advantages of the services offered by. many options available from the leading public clouds and help you design, configure, and maintain network environments that incorporate an assortment of public and private clouds plus on-premises datacenters.

Other public clouds supported by Progent include:

Microsoft has made a strong effort to enable seamless hybrid environments that integrate Microsoft 365 and on-premises Exchange deployments. This permits you to have specific mailboxes hosted on your on-premises datacenter and other mailboxes hosted by Microsoft 365. Progent's Microsoft-certified Exchange consulting team can assist you with any facet of planning, implementing and debugging your hybrid Microsoft 365/Exchange solution. Progent's Exchange consultants can deliver as-needed support to help you through challenging technical issues and also can provide extensive project management outsourcing to ensure your hybrid Exchange initiative is completed on schedule and within budget. To find out more about Progent's consulting support for hybrid Microsoft 365 Exchange and on-prem Exchange environments, visit Exchange Online integration with on-prem Exchange.

Progent's certified Office and Microsoft 365 consultants can help businesses to incorporate Office desktop and Microsoft 365 applications such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Project and Publisher into a seamless productivity solution that provides quick return on investment and enables better business results. Progent can help your company to interface Office or Microsoft 365 applications with each other and with additional core Microsoft platforms such as SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server deployed on-premises or hosted in the cloud. Progent's consultants can also help you to resolve compatibility issues between different versions of Microsoft Office desktop and offers live online Office and Microsoft 365 training to individuals or groups.

Progent's Amazon AWS cloud planning and integration consultants offer affordable online support to assist companies to integrate Amazon AWS cloud services such as Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for virtual server hosting, Amazon S3 for expandable cloud storage, and Glacier for low-cost long-term archiving. Progent can help you with every phase of Amazon AWS integration including needs analysis, preparedness evaluation, system design, testing, configuration, administration, performance optimization, licensing management, backup/restore mechanisms, and security. Progent offers advanced expertise with firewall configuration and VPN access and can help you create cloud-based or hybrid environments that seamlessly integrate Amazon AWS services. Progent can provide as-needed consulting or Progent can provide project management outsourcing services to help you migrate smoothly to the Amazon AWS cloud.

Amazon Marketplace Web Service is an integrated collection of APIs that enables Amazon sellers to improve the efficiency of their operations by automating key sales activities such as listings, orders, shipments, fulfillment, and finances. By leveraging Amazon's extensive online selling environment and automating their sales processes, merchants can broaden their market, lower their operating costs, accelerate response time to customers, and increase their profits. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) consultants can work with your development team and provide application programming, workflow integration, project management support, and training to help you cut development time and costs and get to market quickly.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform integration experts can provide affordable online and onsite support to assist companies of any size to migrate any part of their critical IT infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform services. This can save time and equipment costs and allow access to Google's cutting edge AI and machine learning technology. Progent can help your IT team with every aspect of Google Cloud Platform migration and troubleshooting including requirements analysis, readiness evaluation, architectural design, pilot testing, configuration, administration, performance tuning, licensing management, backup/restore mechanisms, and security and compliance.