Atlanta Work at Home Employees Solutions Consulting Company

Enlarging your remote workforce may have a significant impact on network architecture, security, and corporate workflows. Progent has two decades of experience helping small and mid-size businesses to plan, deploy, administer, tune, and debug IT environments that incorporate work-from-home employees. Progent can help your Atlanta organization to select the appropriate tools and follow best practices in creating and maintaining a safe virtual ecosystem for telecommuters that facilitates teamwork and delivers maximum business value. Progent can provide services that go from as-needed guidance for getting you past occasional technical bottlenecks to comprehensive project management or co-management to help you carry out mission-critical tasks.

Progent can help Atlanta, Georgia businesses to with any aspect of creating a high-performing work-from-home environment by delivering network infrastructure design and configuration services, IP voice expertise, video conferencing integration, collaboration platform customization and training, cloud integration, helpdesk augmentation, security and compliance, backup/restore solutions, and streamlined management.

Network Infrastructure for Teleworkers
Configuring the physical and software infrastructure required to support an at-home workforce can be particularly complicated if you have to manage a combination of worker-owned hardware like PCs and notebooks, Internet routers, and wireless appliances from various vendors and with a mix of operating systems and firmware levels. Progent's experience providing remote help for both legacy as well as modern technologies in virtual office venues enables you to make cost-effective use of your available network infrastructure and provides you with fast access to expertise for making essential upgrades. Services offered by Progent to help you to implement a high-functioning telecommuting ecosystem include:

• VPN technology makes it possible to establish a secure connection for authenticated at-home employees to access IT resources situated at your corporate datacenter or in the cloud. Progent's consultants can assist you to configure and maintain VPN connections between your at-home workforce and your various IT resources by providing online VPN integration support. For organizations with Cisco's ASA firewalls, Progent's Cisco-certified ASA Firewall experts can help your remote workers to set up Cisco's popular AnyConnect client software for secure VPN tunneling for a broad range of endpoint devices including Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, and Google Android.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) products enable a telecommuter to see and interact with a remote PC's desktop. This technology gives IT managers significant control over the computing ecosystem of at-home employees and offers them a familiar experience. Progent's virtual desktop services include Windows Remote Desktop integration and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI expertise.
• Routers connect at-home computer networks to the Internet and support VPN connections, home wireless connectivity, and firewall services. Progent can provide top-tier remote consulting for deploying home routers from a variety of manufacturers. See router integration support from Cisco-certified experts.
• Home Wi-Fi networks, often shared by the whole family and guests, are commonly utilized by telecommuters to access their router for work. This can cause throughput and security problems. Progent can help you to resolve these issues by providing expertise like Cisco Aironet configuration consulting, Cisco-certified Meraki WiFi installation expertise, and Ubiquiti wireless access point setup help.
• Internet connectivity methods impact the speed and reliability of connections between telecommuters and the corporate network. Mission-critical applications may require redundant Internet connections in the event the normal connection fails. Progent can provide guidance for selecting service providers, choosing sensible bandwidth and data volume offerings, and setting up high-availability Internet connections. See Internet access integration services.

IP Voice Integration for Teleworkers
Extending the corporate PBX system to include remote users is critical to supporting an effective at-home workforce. A variety of cloud-based VoIP platforms are used by SMBs to support remote users. Many enterprises rely on Cisco's modern or older products for VoIP solutions. Progent can help organizations of all sizes to plan or maintain a telecommuter VoIP environment that provides the versatility, transparency and security needed for teleworkers. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice experts offer high-level support to help organizations tune their existing Cisco IP voice systems to support an expanding at-home workforce.

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM) delivers high-end IP telephony capabilities to devices such as IP phones, media processing platforms, Voice over IP gateways, and multimedia apps deployed across the network. CUCM supports other mixed media services like unified messaging, video conferencing, and customer interaction networks. For more information about Progent's Cisco Unified CM or CUCM expertise, see Cisco Unified Communications Manager consulting services.
• CallManager is Cisco's legacy call-processing software and has been replaced by Cisco Unified CM or CUCM. Progent's consultants can assist your company to support your existing CallManager deployment or migrate efficiently to Cisco's modern IP telephony solutions. To find out about Progent's support services for CallManager and Cisco's other older VoIP platforms, refer to CallManager consulting services.
• Cisco IP Gateways enable integration with public telephony networks and with clients operating beyond the corporate firewall like telecommuters. Progent can provide expert support for Cisco's legacy IP gateways including the UC520, UC540 and UC560 product lines and for current Cisco Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) gateways. See Cisco SIP gateway integration consulting.
• Additional VoIP Products supported by Progent's consultants include Vonage, Intermedia Unite and 8x8. Progent can help you to update your WAN architecture to work with these solutions and provide online integration and troubleshooting services.

Video Conferencing for Teleworkers
A broad range of video conferencing products from leading vendors enable virtual discussions, video and voice conferencing, chat sessions, and screen/content sharing for both onsite workers and teleworkers. Many organizations utilize multiple conferencing products to accommodate their various partners and customers. Progent can help you to maintain your current voice/video conferencing environment and enhance the productivity of your remote employees.

• Skype for Business is Microsoft's popular communications platform that enables presence, IM, voice and video calling and conferencing plus the seamless integration of these capabilities within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 productivity software including PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. Progent offers the expertise of Microsoft-certified consultants who can assist your company to configure and manage Skype for Business clients to support your remote employees. To learn more about Progent's support expertise for Skype for Business, see Skype for Business consulting experts.
• FaceTime is Apple's multiuser video phone app for iOS, iPadOS, iPod and macOS computers and smartphones. FaceTime works over Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Newer versions of FaceTime support as many as 32 concurrent users for video sessions. To learn more about Progent's support services for Apple FaceTime, see Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
• Webex Meeting Center supports online conferencing for virtually all computing devices. Offered through Cisco's Webex Cloud platform, Webex services include sharing specific content or computer screens, presentations that incorporate rich media such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Flash videos, session capture, plus revision and playback for future reference. To learn more about Progent's consulting expertise for Cisco Webex as well as for additional video conferencing products from Cisco, visit Progent's Webex Meeting Center support services.
• Teams is Microsoft's next-generation replacement for Skype for Business. Teams acts as a hub for conversations, contacts, and information with features that include IP voice and video conferencing, persistent threaded chat, plus data sharing. To learn more about Progent's support expertise for Microsoft Teams and for other Microsoft 365 products, visit Progent's Microsoft Teams consulting services.
• Additional Voice/Video Conferencing Platforms supported by Progent's conferencing experts include Google Meet, Amazon Chime, Zoom, and Slack. Progent can provide integration and debugging services for these conferencing platforms and help your business to optimize your network architecture to run them.

Microsoft Integrated Collaboration Platforms for Teleworkers
Microsoft's collaboration products are closely integrated with Microsoft's popular Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 suites, providing a rich environment of applications that deliver a cohesive user experience for exchanging data and ideas throughout multiple sites and on a broad selection of endpoint devices. Progent has delivered remote consulting services for SharePoint and Exchange since their original releases and can help businesses to deploy these critical collaboration platforms to maximize the productivity of your at-home workers.

SharePoint uses web sites to allow collaboration and information sharing by providing policy-driven delivery of content, business processes, and tools for looking through company-wide business data. SharePoint allows you to build secure web portals that enables at-home workers to see and update aggregated business intelligence by means of Intranets (Wikis), Blogs, social web sites, and Web Parts. For details about Progent's SharePoint consulting expertise, refer to SharePoint configuration and development expertise.

Exchange and Exchange Online offer secure collaboration features including public folders, shared mailboxes, and shared calendars and contacts. Progent's Microsoft certified Exchange experts can show you how to activate and utilize these features for your at-home workers. To learn about Progent's Exchange support services, go to integration consulting for Microsoft Exchange.

OneDrive is Microsoft's shared cloud file hosting and synchronization service, similar to GoogleDrive. Remote users can store files to the OneDrive service, and co-workers can retrieve them securely through a web browser. Provided with Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365, OneDrive enables at-home workers to co-edit files. Revisions made offline are automatically uploaded when you reconnect to the Internet. To find out about Progent's consulting services for Microsoft OneDrive, refer to Microsoft Onedrive configuration experts.

Cloud Integration Services for Telecommuters
Progent can provide affordable remote support for enabling organizations to create, manage and repair cohesive network models that include physical data centers, at-home workers, branches, plus public cloud services. Progent can provide top-tier consultant for all modes of public cloud service including Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service. Progent can help telecommuters fix problems with public cloud access, authentication, and cybersecurity.

Microsoft Azure is a leading family of public cloud services that enables you to utilize infrastructure, virtual servers, and key apps hosted on Microsoft's massive cloud. Microsoft Azure offers over one hundred cloud-based services such as the ability to host Windows and Linux-based VMs, on-demand cloud storage, email and messaging, application development with Visual Studio, and data protection. Progent can help your organization to deploy virtual machines on Azure Virtual Machines, configure storage on Azure Storage services, streamline identity control with Azure Active Directory, and plan backup and recovery systems with Azure Backup. Progent's cloud experts can also help you establish secure access to Azure services for teleworkers by setting up and troubleshooting firewall appliances and VPN IPsec tunnels. To learn about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft Azure, refer to Azure consulting services.

Microsoft 365, formerly called Office 365, is Microsoft's popular family of client productivity applications and cloud-based services available on a subscription basis. Microsoft apps and services are provided in a variety of plans intended for users ranging from individuals and small offices to large enterprises. Progent can provide quick and affordable online access to experts familiar with Microsoft 365-compatible endpoints based on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android technology. Progent can assist you to evaluate the numerous subscription plans available for Microsoft 365 and deploy 365 apps for your telecommuters in a way that delivers maximum business value. To learn about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft 365, visit Microsoft 365 consulting services.

Exchange Online is one of the most widely used applications in the Microsoft 365 product suite. Microsoft 365 Exchange Online provides the advantages of reduced spending for physical infrastructure, easier management, on-demand scaling, high availability, and additional advantages inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Exchange Online to operate smoothly with local Exchange environments, enabling you to create hybrid networks. Progent's certified Exchange experts are available for occasional assistance to guide you through tough technical bottlenecks and can also provide comprehensive project management services to ensure your remote workers have easy and secure access to your Exchange Online environment. To learn Progent's expertise for Exchange Online, see Exchange Online configuration and troubleshooting consulting.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a trailblazer in the public cloud computing arena and is the industry's biggest source of cloud services. Progent can provide fast and economical online contact with cloud connectivity experts who can help your organization to design, implement, manage, and debug hybrid information networks that incorporate Amazon AWS cloud services with local resources and with other public clouds such as Microsoft Azure. Progent also offers access to Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to help your company to create a high-uptime network model to make sure your employees have a consistent computing environment whether they are working from your headquarters, a branch office, at home, or on the road. To learn about Progent's support services for Amazon AWS, see Amazon AWS integration support.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a leading suite of cloud services that provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco consulting experts can help your organization to extend your current IT assets with the Google Cloud Platform, and Progent's database consultants can help you make your critical applications cloud friendly so your remote workers can take full advantage of Google Cloud services. Progent can help your organization to deploy VMs on Google Cloud Compute Engine, plan an efficient storage solution with Google Cloud Storage, and streamline access control for telecommuters with Google Cloud Identity services. Progent can also help your organization to utilize GCP's unified management technology to administer and track your GCP ecosystem. To find out, refer to Google Cloud Platform consulting services.

Help Desk Services for Remote Workers
An emergency, enterprise-wide transition to a from-home business model, which could be motivated by an epidemic or as part of a disaster recovery/business continuity process, can overstretch even a high-performing internal Call Desk. Progent's Call Center services allow organizations of any size to outsource or supplement their Help Desk by using Progent's online Technical Response Center team.

• Progent's Standard Help Desk Call Center services utilize Progent's extensive team of online IT support experts combined with world-class trouble ticketing and tracking technology to provide an economical, advanced Help Desk. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services provide a comprehensive solution that addresses all aspects of online Level 1 PC support from initial help requests through ticket creation, screen sharing, problem resolution, and incident reporting. A browser-based User's Service Portal allows from-home workers to check or revise the status of their active tickets, add details, and upload screenshots or attachments. Support services are provided at a significant discount off Progent's normal Level 1 technical support charges, and Progent makes available optional rapid hand-off to Level 2 and Level 3 support specialists to resolve advanced problems. For more information, go to Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services for small businesses.
• Progent's Support Desk Supplemental Service enables your business to augment your existing Help Desk team by splitting delivery of Call Center support services transparently between your in-house IT support personnel and Progent's nationwide team of desktop support engineers and subject matter specialists. Progent's shared Call Desk service uses a collaborative support solution utilizing the leading PSA tool for handling service requests and ticketing, establishing ownership, monitoring progress, and generating management reports. To find out how Progent's Call Desk Augmentation Services can enable your business to deliver best-in-class desktop support to your telecommuters, visit Progent's Call Desk supplementation Services.

Security for Teleworkers
Work-from-Home employees commonly use their own computing devices and usually operate in a poorly secured physical space. This increases their susceptibility to malware attacks and calls for judicious configuration of corporate firewalls, AV tools, multi-factor authentication, remote monitoring, intensive user training, and the creation of policies built on best practices. Progent's veteran roster of IT security support consultants can help you to design, configure and manage a compliant security solution that guards critical information resources in environments that include telecommuters.

Firewalls allow you to build a network that can be securely utilized by on-premises users as well as by teleworkers, mobile employees, suppliers, customers, and the public. Modern firewall devices allow you to configure and manage appropriate access rights to various groups of users and to expand your network and adjust your cybersecurity posture as your business evolves and as network attacks become increasingly complex. Progent supports both current and legacy firewall appliances from all leading manufacturers including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, Juniper, SonicWall and Fortinet. For more information about Progent's firewall configuration expertise, visit firewall configuration and support services.

Remote Endpoint Security Monitoring makes it possible to watch over the disparate devices utilized by teleworkers and either reject or spot and mitigate the latest cyber attacks such as ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM) services, a small-footprint software agent is installed on every protected endpoint, monitoring all activity and utilizing state-of-the-art machine learning and full execution context from SentinelOne to detect new threats on arrival. When a cyberattack is discovered, ProSight Active Security Monitoring instantly isolates the infected device from the corporate network to contain the malware. Since the ProSight Active Security Monitoring agent is autonomous, endpoints remain protected even when they are not connected to the Internet. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, reseller, and integrator. To learn more about ProSight ASM, see remote endpoint monitoring for telecommuters.

Progent's Duo MFA services utilize Cisco's Duo technology to defend against compromised passwords through the use of two-factor authentication. Duo enables one-tap identity verification with Apple iOS, Google Android, and other personal devices. Using Duo 2FA, when you sign into a protected application and give your password you are asked to verify your identity on a device that only you have and that is accessed using a different network channel. A broad range of devices can be utilized as this second form of ID validation such as an iPhone or Android or wearable, a hardware/software token, a landline telephone, etc. You can register several validation devices. To learn more about ProSight Duo identity authentication services, refer to Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for at-home workers.

Security Audits can evaluate the exposure of your network to all types of outside and internal security attacks for an environment that includes at-home workers. Progent can deploy remote, automated cybersecurity inventory software for quickly and affordably detecting a wide variety of security gaps that can be surfaced over the Internet. Progent's endpoint security assessment experts, which can be provided by data security experts with advanced certifications including CISM, CISSP, and GIAC, can help your business to evaluate your processes and governance policies and assess your network architecture to allow you to implement the highest level of protection for your an at-home workforce.

Download White Paper: Protecting a Work-From-Home (WFH) Environment
To read or download a white paper about critical things to focus on for protecting a network that incorporates work-from-home staff, click:
Securing a Work-From-Home (WFH) Environment White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)

Data Protection Solutions for Teleworkers
Data Protection covers saving and recovering vital data in order to avoid data loss and minimize recovery time and effort in case of storage problems due to hardware breakdowns, software glitches, human mistakes, malware, or any other reason. Reliable data protection strategies can be particularly difficult to architect and manage in hybrid environments that incorporate private data centers, public clouds, and at-home workers.

• Backup/Recovery solutions for remote workers must cover multiple types of personally owned endpoints. Progent can provide fast online access to consultants knowledgeable about a wide range of platforms for protection Windows, Apple and Linux/UNIX servers and desktop computers as well as laptops, iOS and Android tablets and handhelds. Popular backup/restore products maintained by Progent's data protection experts include Barracuda Backup, Azure Backup, Symantec Backup Exec, Acronis Backup and Recovery, Retrospect, and Time Machine. To protect resources spread throughout a wide area network, Progent offers ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a backup/recovery service that utilizes cloud-based storage and features fine-grained restore and centralized management.
• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity strategies commonly anticipate scenarios that require a rapid switch to a work-at-home environment. Progent's senior disaster recovery planning experts and business continuity planning consultants can help you to create, document and test a DR/BC strategy that addresses the process of switching to an at-home workforce.

Unified Management for Remote Workers
Microsoft has rebranded and rebundled its endpoint management platforms under the title Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which includes Intune for cloud management of remote endpoints and Configuration Manager for managing local computers. Microsoft Endpoint Manager offers a unified environment for protecting corporate information by managing onsite, mobile, and at-home endpoint devices.

Intune
Intune is a component of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also includes Microsoft Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud service for managing and securing remote devices and applications. Managed endpoint devices can be personally owned or business owned. IT administrators managing the enrolled endpoint computers of teleworkers can use Intune to provision and validate applications on managed devices, push updates and certificates, set up policies for permission to access information and resources, set passwords, establish VPN connections, determine how home-based workers share data, establish threat protection, ensure compliance, and wipe sensitive data from lost, stolen or deactivated devices. Intune works with iOS, Google Android, Windows, and macOS computers. To learn about Intune and how Progent can assist you to use Microsoft's Endpoint Management to manage the endpoint devices of your at-home workforce, see Intune mobile device management experts.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced unified Mobile Device Management product that helps network managers to keep remote endpoints current and secure. Workspace ONE uses VMware AirWatch technology for centralized endpoint administration combined with VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery platform for identity control, app management, and setup management of endpoint computers. Workspace ONE runs with devices based on Windows 10, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or leading distributions of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is available by subscription as a cloud-based service or as an on-site product through a one-time purchase. Top capabilities of Workspace ONE include rapid over-the-air deployment of new notebooks, quick onboarding of new users, policy setting and enforcement for all classes of devices, aggregated management reporting and analytics, email encryption, and seamless integration with Microsoft applications and cloud-based products. For details about Progent's expertise for VMware Workspace ONE, go to VMware Workspace ONE remote endpoint management expertise.

Contact Progent for Telecommuter Expertise
To contact Progent about creating and maintaining an efficient telecommuter solution for your Atlanta, Georgia business, call 1-800-993-9400 or go to Contact Progent.