Cloud Solutions

Progent offers fast and economical support from cloud connectivity experts who can assist your business to design, configure, maintain, and debug hybrid networking models that incorporate Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud products and services with local datacenters as well as with additional public clouds like Azure.

Progent's experts can help you assess the advantages and drawbacks of Amazon AWS cloud services compared to other cloud platforms, move apps and infrastructure to Amazon AWS, design backup/restore strategies that utilize Amazon AWS cloud storage services, and resolve firewall and VPN connectivity issues. Progent can provide help from Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to show you how to build a resilient network architecture so your clients have a productive computing environment regardless of whether they are working from your main office, a branch site, from home, or on the road.

Amazon is a trail blazer in the cloud arena and is the industry's leading provider of public cloud services. Amazon Web Services offers a broad range of cloud-based services such as Elastic Compute Cloud for on-demand compute power for VMs, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for instantly scalable low-latency cloud storage, and Amazon Glacier for economical extended backup. These Infrastructure-as-a-Service products enable businesses of any size to transfer some or all of their network infrastructure to the cloud, using a pay-for-use approach to minimize hardware investments while simplifying management overhead and shortening the time needed to deploy new applications.

Hybrid Cloud Integration
For the majority of businesses, utilizing public cloud products and services is a given. The only issue is how to determine the appropriate trade-off between cloud and on-premises infrastructure. Many organizations have legacy mission-critical apps which are not easy to adapt to a cloud environment. Performance-driven transaction processing applications may call for local hardware configurations to deliver maximum throughput. In addition, corporate policies or government standards may require more direct control over key types of data than can be achieved with public clouds. Consequently, hybrid networks, which combine on-premises and cloud resources, are frequently selected as the best solution.

To make things even more complicated, Amazon AWS is in competition with other providers of public cloud services such as Microsoft, whose Azure offerings include Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) options as well as a Platform-as-a-Service model specially tuned for Windows environments. Basically, serious evaluation is needed for any organization to select the appropriate cloud solution.

Progent's seasoned system designers can assist your company to plan and deploy a hybrid cloud ecosystem that includes Amazon AWS in a way that optimizes business value. Progent can help your IT team with every aspect of Amazon AWS migration and troubleshooting including needs analysis, preparedness evaluation, system design and review, pilot testing, configuration, centralized administration, performance tuning, licensing management, backup/restore solutions, and security strategies. Progent offers advanced expertise with firewalls and VPN connections and can show you how to create cloud-based or hybrid cloud networking models that efficiently integrate Amazon AWS cloud services. Progent can provide occasional consulting or provide comprehensive project management outsourcing or co-sourcing services to help you migrate efficiently to the Amazon AWS cloud.

Key Amazon AWS Cloud Services
The Amazon AWS family of cloud products includes dozens of infrastructure services that cover computing, storage, databases, analytics, mobility, enterprise applications, administration, Internet of Things (IoT), and security, Amazon AWS services popular with businesses of any size and for which Progent provides comprehensive support include:

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, called Amazon EC2, is a virtual machine hosting service that lets you provision, scale, and manage cloud-based virtual machines, known as EC2 instances. You can deploy any number of instances and you pay only for the capacity you use. You can manage the individual virtual server as well as the cluster-level features of a range of operating systems, deploy your hosted apps, and control network access permissions. You also manage your own software licenses under a Bring-Your-Own-License policy. You can use a standard Amazon Machine Image (AMI) template and deploy a virtual server instantly or you can create your own AMI that includes your apps, libraries, data, and configurations. Amazon EC2 can scale processing resources on demand to accommodate up or down spikes in workloads, avoiding the need for sophisticated capacity management. You also can specify multiple geographic locations for high availability and you can request static IP addresses to work with your application requirements.

Amazon Simple Storage Service, called Amazon S3, is a cloud-hosted storage service that offers high-performance storage for any volume of data. Amazon S3 expands or contracts easily and you are billed only for the capacity you actually consume. Amazon S3 is commonly implemented as offsite storage for disaster recovery but is also suited for high-demand applications, most prominently Amazon's giant retail web site. Amazon S3's web service interface supports multiple storage classes intended for various usage cases. These include S3 Standard for storage of frequently accessed data, Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access for long-lived but rarely accessed data, and Amazon Glacier for archives. You can also define custom lifecycle policies so your Amazon S3 data automatically and transparently migrates to a different storage category without requiring modifications to your applications. Amazon S3 cloud storage can be integrated with Amazon EC2 or as a standalone cloud service.

Amazon Glacier is a cloud-based storage service intended to provide low-cost archiving and long-term storage for data that is rarely retrieved. Amazon Glacier does not deliver the low-latency of Amazon S3 storage and is not suitable for real-time apps. Although restore time is glacially slow and can take hours, storage costs are less than one cent per GB per month, which is lower than on-premises storage. In addition, you can reduce overall storage costs by specifying lifecycle rules to move sets of Amazon S3 objects automatically to Amazon Glacier. Amazon Glacier can also assist businesses to comply with regulatory standards for data retention by offering highly-dependable offsite backup with features that include periodic, automatic data integrity audits and automatic self-healing capability.

How Progent Can Assist You Integrate Amazon AWS Solutions
If you are planning to integrate Amazon’s AWS services into your information network using either a fully cloud-based or a hybrid model, Progent can help you assess the business benefits of Amazon AWS vs. competing cloud solutions. Progent can provide expertise for every facet of your cloud integration project including preparedness assessment, solution design, pilot testing, configuration, management, performance optimization, software license management, and disaster recovery strategies. Progent can also provide access to certified data security experts to ensure. make sure your environment is protected and compliant with applicable regulations.

Progent can assist you to identify which of your critical apps are appropriate for Amazon AWS and show you how to you update legacy or custom applications so they can be hosted by Amazon AWS. Progent offers affordable online and onsite expertise to help you deal with occasional technical issues, or Progent can provide comprehensive project management outsourcing or co-sourcing to ensure that you execute your cloud integration project on schedule and on budget.

A typical issue encountered while integrating your network with Amazon AWS, or with any public cloud, is configuring secure access for various devices located either inside or outside your security perimeter. Progent can provide the skills of Cisco-certified CCIE infrastructure engineers or firewall configuration experts certified by Symantec, Barracuda, WatchGuard, and others to show you how to set up and administer security appliances for connecting safely to Amazon AWS services. Progent can also provide the services of iOS technology specialists and Android integration consultants to help you to connect smartphones and tablets for your Amazon AWS environment.

Examples of online integration support offered by Progent to assist businesses interface with the Amazon AWS cloud include:

• Propose or review the system design for hybrid environments that incorporate Amazon EC2 and Simple Storage Service
• Integrate and troubleshoot VPN access to Amazon AWS
• Configure Cisco AnyConnect and Symantec AWS Gateway Service
• Set up and troubleshoot firewalls from Barracuda, Symantec, SonicWall, Check Point and others
• Design, deploy, and validate backup and recovery solutions integrated with Amazon Simple Storage Service
• Create and verify Amazon Machine Images for Windows or Linux VMs and apps
• Install Java utilities for AMI images
• Specify, implement and verify security rules
• Resolve elastic and static IP issues
• Resolve DNS and load balancing issues
• Configure NATs for datacenters and remote offices
• Create PHP code for signing AWS requests
• Create Active Directory service instances for Amazon EC2
• Help with Amazon SQS service

Other Hybrid Cloud Integration Support Offered by Progent
Progent offers expertise in all major public cloud platforms and can provide quick online access to a public cloud integration consultant. Key cloud platforms and services supported by Proegnt's experts include:

Amazon Marketplace Web Service is an integrated collection of APIs that enables Amazon sellers to streamline their operations by automating crucial sales activities such as listings, orders, shipments, inbound and outbound fulfillment, and finances. By tapping into Amazon's extensive online selling environment and automating their sales processes, merchants can broaden their market, reduce their cost of sales, accelerate reaction time to customers, and increase their profits. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service consultants can collaborate with your development staff and provide application programming, workflow integration, project management support, and training so you can shorten development time and costs and speed up your return on investment.

Progent's Microsoft Azure integration consultants can assist you with any phase of Azure cloud integration including needs analysis, readiness assessment, solution architecture, pre-production testing, deployment, automated management, performance optimization, software license controls, disaster recovery strategies, security policy enforcement, and compliance assessment. Progent can assist your IT staff to set up and debug firewalls and VPN tunnels so that your clients can safely access to Azure services, and Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting experts can help you set up critical Microsoft technologies to work in the cloud including Microsoft Windows Server, Exchange, SQL and SharePoint. Progent can also assist you to create a hybrid ecosystem that seamlessly integrates on-premises datacenters with Azure resources.

Microsoft has made a strong effort to enable transparent hybrid environments that integrate Office 365 and local Exchange. This permits you to have certain mailboxes located at your corporate datacenter or private cloud and other mailboxes hosted by Office 365. Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting team can help your organization with any phase of planning, integrating and debugging your hybrid Office 365/Exchange network. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide occasional expertise to help you resolve stubborn technical bottlenecks and also can provide comprehensive project management outsourcing to make sure your hybrid Office 365/Exchange initiative is carried out on time and on budget. To learn more about Progent's consulting expertise for hybrid Office 365 and on-premises Exchange systems, refer to Office 365 Exchange Online integration solutions with on-premises Exchange.

Progent's certified Microsoft Office and Office 365 experts can help businesses of any size to integrate Office desktop and Microsoft Office 365 apps including Excel, Office Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Microsoft Access, Visio and Publisher into a seamless solution that provides quick return on investment and promotes improved business results. Progent can assist your company to interface Microsoft Office or Office 365 apps with each other and with other core Microsoft platforms such as SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server running locally or hosted in the cloud. Progent can also assist you to fix compatibility issues between various releases of Office and can provide live online Office and Office 365 training to individual users or teams.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform (GCP) integration consultants can provide cost-effective online and onsite consulting to help organizations to move all or part of their core network resources to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This can save management hassle and equipment expense and allow the use of Google's cutting edge machine learning tools. Progent can assist you with every phase of Google Cloud Platform integration including needs analysis, preparedness evaluation, system design and review, testing, deployment, administration, performance optimization, software license management, backup/restore solutions, and security.