Computer Outsourcing for Medium-size Businesses

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent’s team of network engineers is composed of among the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco experts in Northern California. With more than a decade of real-world background per consultant, Progent's Microsoft and Cisco qualified experts offer a proven set of methodologies for solving network problems, managing projects, and delivering professional support. The technical scope of Progent's support team allows Progent to offer your company a consulting expert with task-relevant skills and an effective approach for delivering fast and affordable network solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When appropriate, Progent relies on a group approach to resolving the most stubborn network issues. By leveraging hundreds of man-years of experience from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco qualified professionals, Progent can quickly and efficiently handle even the most vexing issues. Working with hundreds of customers and performing thousands of complex deployment and configuration projects annually gives Progent a special perspective on which approaches work and which ones do not. Complex software compatibility issues are a minefield for even the most skilled consultants unless they have a long and diverse history in real-world work with a wide variety of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has incorporated the aggregate experience of its senior engineering staff to create an in-house, company-wide set of best practices intended to promote timely, affordable resolutions of technical problems and to measure and maximize customer approval. These methodologies include a powerful emphasis on customer communication and services documentation. Progent's Founder and CEO, Les Kent, has a 25-year track record of innovative network integration, business management, marketing, and operations. Progent's company-wide best practices are strongly influenced by Mr. Kent's background creating complex information technology solutions while working as a system designer, program developer, task manager, implementation professional and troubleshooter.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As an authorized partner with Microsoft and Cisco, Progent ensures that staff consultants undergo ongoing product and best-practices training that contains valuable lessons and methods for new product adoption that have been gleaned from the experience of hundreds of thousands of computer professionals around the world. This results in continually more efficient provision of services to Progent's customers.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's advanced service documentation system provides comprehensive documentation for all delivered support. Each Progent team consultant has complete availability of all the specifics of support provided by any consultant to every customer. This database of issues and solutions, as well as false alarms and missteps, is arranged as an easily searchable internal information store that enables Progent's support professionals to communicate their knowledge corporate-wide to ensure that the general efficiency of Progent's support grows continuously. This database also eliminates your reliance on an individual consultant by making it possible for one Progent consultant to take up where another left off while minimizing time spent getting up to speed on your information system environment. An additional advantage of Progent's service documentation database is that your company can more smoothly handle network management services in house if it becomes economical to do so, or you can move to another consulting company if you become dissatisfied with Progent's support.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For larger initiatives, Progent engineers follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) methodology for providing service. Microsoft Solutions Framework breaks down major initiatives into discrete and rational components that reduce the risk of a project falling off track. Each phase creates a solid base for the completion of following phases. Design and integration requirements are defined early in the project continuum so difficulties can be pi pointed and resolved before client producivity is impacted. This also keeps costs from skyrocketing due to unexpected crises during large scale roll outs. All project components are documented to build a detailed database of technical services provided and to help in ongoing network support.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As authorized consulting associates of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the world's largest information technology databases and resources. Some of the most helpful support knowledge bases accessible by Progent's engineers are the industry best practices incorporated into the various Management Packs created by Microsoft and other vendors to be used in conjunction with Microsoft Operations Manager, the automated server monitoring platform used as the foundation of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs (MPs) contain custom built processing rules that can respond to events, performance margins, and alerts monitored by Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. MPs can also provide expert suggestions on how to handle specific issues by programmatically finding relevant technical notes from the extensive Microsoft support database.

To get in touch with Progent for mid-size business network support, call 1-800-993-9400 or send email to network-support-help@progent.com.