Progent's co-sourcing services allow your business to find the right balance between in-house and outside support by leveraging the capability of your in-house IT staff with the in-depth expertise of Progent's engineers. By delivering effective support when you need it, providing specialists for critical applications, minimizing travel costs through remote support, offering unique services such as customized, automated server monitoring, and charging only for the services you use, Progent gives you an affordable way to maximize the business value of your network.

Why Progent Makes Sense for Mid-size Businesses
Progent's staff of certified IT professionals have extensive experience with enterprise networks, allowing mid-size businesses to achieve world-class IT support without having to maintain large internal IT organizations or absorb the high cost of outsourcing network support to large national service organizations.

Working with Progent allows your mid-size business to:

• Avoid Turning IT Management Into Crisis Management
  Companies with 50 to 250 network clients often have sophisticated, enterprise-class IT infrastructures, but rarely have internal IT staffs with the depth and breadth of technical expertise to provide all the IT support that complex networks require. Internal resources are often overworked and budgetary realities do not permit hiring additional full-time IT staff.

  These environments can be subject to higher than average employee turnover, which often leads to situations where replacement support staff must focus on keeping the network running rather than enhancing it. Lacking in knowledge of the history, design, implementation, and architecture of the network, and with little time available between crises, new support staff are unlikely to be able to plan and implement effective network upgrades or migrate the system to keep up with changing business requirements.

• Let Senior Management Focus Business, Not Networks
  Many mid-size businesses are aggressively moving to outsourced support models for information technology because building up large internal IT staffs seldom pays off with strategic business advantages. Attempting to handle all IT service issues in-house can bog down senior management with the details of IT problems, yielding poor returns for time invested by such top talent.

  Companies need reliable, feature-rich, scalable, and fault-tolerant IT environments to support their mission critical applications, but they recognize that it makes little business sense to own and build such systems themselves or to manage large internal staffs of IT personnel. Smart outsourcing or co-sourcing allows companies to concentrate their internal resources on areas that will bring them the greatest strategic and competitive advantages in the markets they serve.

• Migrate Quickly to the Best Network Technology
  The tough economic times that many companies suffered over the past five years has caused many IT environments to become woefully out of date as a result of IT budgets being slashed in the interest of survival. As economic prosperity has returned to many market segments, the starvation diets forced upon many business networks has created a burden of outdated information systems.

  This problem becomes apparent when the demand for new applications and customer-centered information solutions can’t be easily adapted to legacy systems. Increasingly, companies are being challenged by new upstart competitors who are not saddled with outdated environments and can quickly introduce state-of-the-art, customer-friendly applications such as web-based eCommerce, vender extranets, customer portals, and integrated supply chain management. Budgets may be available, but often such major initiatives can't be carried out solely with existing resources. Adding to full-time head count seldom makes long-term economic sense for project-specific work, and companies often don’t have the time to bring resources up to speed for business-critical projects. In these circumstances, it can be very cost effective to engaged outsourced resources that can solve problems immediately.

The scope and size of Progent's consulting staff offer a special array of benefits to businesses trying to increase the productivity of their information network within a reasonable budget. These advantages include:

• Best Practices
  Progent’s team of Microsoft and Cisco certified experts average longer than ten years of hands-on industry experience, in the trenches of IT service, performing a broad range of IT tasks for an extensive array of businesses. Each Progent consultant shares a proven set of personal best practices which are incorporated into shared best practices training that Progent instills in its consulting personnel. This means that you get not only expert technical capability, but also a support engineer with field-tested approaches for applying technical knowledge to resolve actual IT problems efficiently. Find out more about Progent's best practices for network consulting.

• Value Pricing
  Progent's pricing model is to charge for phone support and on-site help by the minute. Consequently, you are charged just for received services. Progent does not impose a more expensive rate for off-hours or priority service, and inside California or in areas where Progent offers in-person support, Progent does not bill for travel time except for urgent calls where on-site time is less than four hours. In addition, Progent imposes no minimum fee and asks no monthly commitment. Many support organizations demand large minimum payments or charge for every quarter hour or longer. Progent's small granularity does away with big invoices for quick repairs so you will not be forced to allow less critical problems to fester. Find out more about Progent's value pricing for IT outsourcing.

• Full Documentation of IT Services
  Progent has created a comprehensive support reporting system that stores and organizes detailed documentation for all delivered services. Unlike some independent consultants or local service firms who offer minimal documentation or details of services performed, each service provided by Progent is tracked by full documentation. Every Progent staff member has use of the support documentation sent by every staff member to each client. The practice of documenting and organizing service records results in more effective support and eliminates a slew of typical misfortunes such as when a service customer is effectively held hostage to a consultant who refuses to release the keys to the kingdom. Find out more about Progent's documentation of IT outsourcing services.

• Knowledge Transfer
  Progent is committed to information transfer from Progent's support experts to customers. By teaching clients to handle problems that are within their scope, Progent is able to concentrate on providing high-value services where Progent faces few competitors. Small businesses who work with familiar freelance service providers or who maintain internal IT personnel benefit when Progent transfers knowledge about critical technology and tested processes to make their IT environments more robust, secure, and efficient. Find out more about Progent's knowledge transfer services.

Microsoft Operations Manager-based Network Support Packages
Progent has developed special Network Support Packages based on the automated problem detection and analysis capabilities of Microsoft Operations Manager, a powerful network management platform that monitors the reliability, throughput, and security of your network servers and alerts you to problems before they can impact your productivity. Progent's Network Support Packages also include network evaluation, security assessment, Help Desk support, and the design of secure data links between your system and Progent’s support engineers. Find out more about Progent's special Network Support Packages for cost-effective IT support outsourcing.

For additional details about Progent's IT support offerings, refer to our Spec Sheets for IT Support and Server Monitoring Packages, available in PDF files for convenient printing.

For an example of how Microsoft Operations Manager helped a San Francisco Bay Area business achieve enterprise-class network management, read the Microsoft Operations Manager Case Study.

To contact Progent about Network Support Packages for mid-size businesses, call 1-800-993-9400 or send email to network-support-help@progent.com.