Network Help for Small Organizations
Microsoft Azure Cloud Solutions:
Planning, Integration and Troubleshooting Support for Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, formerly called Windows Azure, allows you to offload network infrastructure, business-critical servers and applications to Microsoft's secure, easily accessible public cloud. Azure offers dozens of cloud-based services including the ability to host Windows and Linux-based virtual machines (VMs), on-demand storage, data management, unified messaging, and backup/recovery. Azure services are subscription based and Azure resources are dynamically allocated so you can immediately ramp up or ratchet down compute and storage capacity. Since you pay only for what you need, resource utilization is high, which is one of the major attractions of public clouds along with immediate provisioning and automatic maintenance and updates.
Office 365 Exchange Online, which is based on Azure infrastructure, is popular among small businesses who rely on Exchange and has helped establish Azure as one of the most technologically advanced public cloud platforms. However, many businesses are not ready to move all their infrastructure and applications to the cloud for reasons that include legacy systems that are not easily migrated, government regulations or business standards that require some IT resources to reside exclusively on-premises, performance issues for speed-critical applications that are poorly suited for virtualization, high-availability or disaster recovery considerations, cost, management flexibility, or company culture. Microsoft continues to introduce and enhance technologies that allow you to build and manage so-called hybrid environments that seamlessly integrate physical on-premises IT resources with Azure-based cloud services. This enables you to create a custom network solution that aligns optimally with your business needs and budget.
Progent has helped businesses of all sizes to plan, implement and administer networks based on a variety of hybrid models that combine Azure resources with physical datacenters. Progent can provide affordable online assistance to help you evaluate the potential benefits of different Azure services for your business, and Progent can help you integrate your physical IT resources with the Azure cloud services that make sense for your organization. Progent can help you set up virtual machines on Azure Virtual Machines, configure cloud-based storage on Azure Storage services, streamline identity management with Azure Active Directory, and design backup and restore systems with Azure Backup. Progent can also show you how to create secure connections to Azure for desktop and mobile device users by setting up and troubleshooting firewalls and VPN IPsec tunnels.
Key Microsoft Azure Products
Dozens of cloud-based product families and hundreds of associated services are available under the Microsoft Azure banner. This expanding set of integrated cloud services provides the applications, network infrastructure, management tools and development resources needed to support most IT solution for organizations of any size. Additional products such as Office 365 Exchange Online rely on Azure network infrastructure and management tools. (Visit Office 365 Exchange Online consulting services.) Important Azure offerings supported by Progent include:
Azure Virtual Machines allows quick provisioning and easy management of VMs on Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure. You can deploy virtual machines for Microsoft Windows Server and Linux operating systems. Pricing of virtual machines depends on CPU power, memory size, storage capacity and I/O performance. Azure-based VMs running Windows are accessible through Remote Desktop Connection (RDP). The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) features of Azure Virtual Machines allows you to run Windows workloads like SQL Server and Microsoft Dynamics as well as mainstream Linux distributions such as Red Hat, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, CoreOS, RancherOS and FreeBSD.
The enhanced deployment model for Azure VMs, called Azure Resource Manager and introduced in 2014, replaces Azure Classic and offers streamlined virtual machine management by supporting VM groups with a shared lifecycle. Previously, Azure cloud services for deploying, scaling and managing VMs had to be handled individually. Resource Manager deployment options include Azure Portal, Azure Resource Manager template, Azure PowerShell and Azure Tools for Visual Studio. Progent can help you create and manage Azure environments with maximum efficiency by providing expertise with all of these technologies.
Azure Storage offers dynamically scalable, load balanced primary storage on the Azure cloud. A General Purpose Storage account gives Azure subscribers access to storage services for Blobs, Tables, Files, Queues, and VM disks. Each account has a 500 TB capacity limit. For faster performance, you can subscribe to a Premium storage tier and run VM workloads on solid state disks (SSDs).
Azure Blob storage for General Purpose Storage accounts is designed for large volumes of unstructured data like documents, social media, archival storage, web content and logs. Blobs are arranged as containers, which makes it easy to assign security policies to object groups. To transfer blobs that are too massive to move via the Internet, you can physically ship a disk drive to Microsoft.
A special-purpose Blob Storage account is available for apps that only need block or append blob storage. You can specify frequently used or infrequently used access characteristics for block and append blobs (but not for page blobs). The ability to define hot and cool access patterns in Azure storage accounts allows you to achieve the right price/performance trade-off.
Table storage is affordably-priced storage intended for developers creating non-relational, schemaless metadata such as address books, device information, or web applications. NoSQL Table Storage works with the OData protocol for advanced querying and supports JSON and XML-based AtomPub formats. Queue storage facilitates the creation of messaging applications by supporting asynchronous communication between application components across cloud and physical environments. Azure File storage accommodates SMB shares, which makes it easier to move legacy applications to Azure.
Microsoft Azure Active Directory, or Azure AD, is a cloud based directory and identity management service that supports a wealth of features including multi-factor authentication, password synchronization across hybrid cloud/on-premises environments, device registration, self-service password and group management, privileged account management, fine-grained role based access control (RBAC), plus monitoring of application usage and security. Azure AD provides single sign-on (SSO) access to thousands of Microsoft and third-party Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications such as Office 365, Salesforce.com, and DropBox. Azure AD can also provide secure mobile/remote access to on-premises applications.
Azure AD Connect is the preferred tool for integrating on-premises directories with Azure AD, replacing Azure Active Directory Sync (DirSync) and Azure AD Sync (AAD Sync). AD Connect includes basic synchronization services with single sign-on (SSO) support, optional Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) for configuring hybrid environments that use an on-premises AD FS infrastructure, and Azure AD Connect Health for monitoring and reporting.
Azure Backup is a cloud-based backup service that can be used to protect on-premises datacenters, data in the Azure cloud, and data shared across hybrid cloud/on-premises deployments. With basic Azure Backup services, three copies of backup data are stored at one of Azure's datacenters. An expanded service stores three extra copies of target data at another Azure datacenter located in a different geographic region. Microsoft offers SLAs for 99.9% availability and data retention for up to 99 years. Azure Backup allows you to schedule backups on a daily, monthly, weekly and yearly basis and can recover data more quickly and less expensively than tape technology. Azure Backup encrypts data before sending it over a secure connection to the Azure datacenter for storage. The encryption key for the data is kept locally and not at the Azure datacenter.
Other features of Azure Backup include throttling to improve productivity by shifting backup activity away from peak usage hours, plus data compression and incremental (change-only) backups to enhance performance and reduce storage requirements. In addition, Azure Backup can be combined with Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) to take advantage of SCDPM's awareness of key Microsoft applications such as Exchange Server, SQL Server and SharePoint. For example, SCDPM offers mailbox recovery for Exchange, database-level restore for SQL Server, and Item Level Recovery (ILR) for SharePoint Server.
How Progent Can Help You Integrate Your Microsoft Azure Solution
Whether you want to migrate your business network to the Microsoft Azure cloud or create a hybrid ecosystem that combines on-premises resources with Azure cloud services, Progent can help you understand the benefits of Azure vs. competing public cloud platforms, select the cloud services that align best with your needs and budget, integrate your solution following proven practices, show you how to manage your cloud-based and local resources, train your IT team and end users, and provide as-needed consulting and technical support to make sure your network environment continues to provide maximum business value.
Progent can help with each phase of your Azure migration including requirements analysis, readiness assessment, system design and testing, deployment, tuning, license control, disaster recovery preparedness, security and compliance, and management automation. Progent can help you determine which of your applications are a good fit for Azure and can assist you to update your legacy apps so they can be hosted on Microsoft Azure. Progent offers affordable online expertise to help you resolve occasional technical roadblocks or comprehensive project management services to guide you through your Azure migration on schedule and within budget.
Azure can host a broad range of solutions from Microsoft as well as third-party suppliers. For Microsoft servers, apps, management tools and development resources, Azure offers special optimizations, but Azure also provides extensive Linux support. Linux images available in the Azure Gallery or Marketplace have been created by various Microsoft partners, and for Linux flavors not on Microsoft's Endorsed Distribution list Microsoft supports a Bring-Your-Own-Linux option. Microsoft has steadily enhanced Azure's support for hybrid networks that combine on-premises networks with cloud services. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can provide expertise support for Windows-based technology integrated with Azure by offering services such as Windows Server configuration, Exchange migration and support, SQL Server integration and programming, SharePoint planning and support, Office 365 integration and training, Microsoft Teams planning and migration, Skype for Business setup and troubleshooting, System Center Data Protection Manager consulting, System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager hybrid cloud management, and Microsoft Dynamics GP programming and training.
A critical piece of any hybrid cloud solution is furnishing a safe, easy and reliable way for on-premises and remote users to connect to cloud-based resources. Progent has extensive experience configuring IPsec VPN tunnels and setting up or troubleshooting firewalls to access Microsoft Azure services. Progent offers online access to Cisco-certified CCIE network infrastructure consultants and firewall experts certified by top suppliers such as Symantec, Barracuda, SonicWall, WatchGuard, and Check Point to assist you to configure or debug firewalls for integrating your on-premises network with Microsoft Azure. Progent also supports mobile users by providing the help of Apple iPhone and iPad technology consultants, Google Android integration consultants and RIM BlackBerry specialists to show you how to configure and manage smartphones and tablets connected to your Azure environment. When you encounter problems with your Azure solution, Progent has experience working with Microsoft's Azure support engineers to fix Azure-related issues efficiently.
Common examples of online consulting services that Progent has provided to small businesses to help them support their Microsoft Azure solution include:
- Design or review the architecture of hybrid Azure/on-premises environments
- Build Virtual Machine images for Windows or Linux systems to be hosted on Azure
- Configure Azure Active Directory and Azure AD Connect
- Design and test backup and restore solutions based on Azure Backup
- Set up and troubleshoot virtual hard disks (VHDs) for Azure
- Define and implement security policies
- Identify and repair problems with IP addresses
- Resolve synchronization issues with Office 365
- Configure and debug IPsec VPN tunnels for remote connectivity to Azure
- Set up, update and troubleshoot firewalls from Cisco, Barracuda, WatchGuard, Symantec and others
- Configure Cisco AnyConnect for accessing Azure resources
- Streamline the management of software licenses
- Fix problems with certificates
- Configure management, monitoring and reporting tools
As public cloud technology becomes more sophisticated and cloud service offerings multiply, it becomes increasingly difficult for small businesses to wade through the hype and technical jargon to determine the best path for their information network to take. Progent can help you evaluate the various public cloud services available and design and deploy a cloud solution that fits your business goals and budget. In addition to offering support for Microsoft Azure integration, Progent can provide advanced consulting for these cloud platforms:
Office 365 Exchange Online allows you to use cloud-based servers, mailboxes and other email infrastructure to lower hardware costs and management overhead. You can use Exchange Online to host all your mailboxes, or you can run a hybrid solution that combines on-premises and cloud-resident mailboxes. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants offer budget-friendly online support to assist your small businesses to evaluate the potential advantages of Office 365 Exchange Online, design a network topology that fits your functional requirements and IT budget, plan and implement an efficient migration from your existing Exchange organization to one that incorporates Office 365 Exchange Online, train your IT managers and end users, and provide ongoing consulting and technical support whenever you need help. To learn about Progent's consulting services for hybrid Office 365 and on-premises Exchange environments, see Office 365 integration with on-premises Exchange.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a leading public cloud platform offering a full set of cloud services including Elastic Compute Cloud for hosting virtual machines, Amazon Simple Storage Service for cloud-based storage, and Amazon Glacier for low-cost long-term storage. Progent can help you asses the comparative benefits of Amazon AWS against alternate public cloud platforms and help you to plan and implement a full migration to Amazon AWS or to create a hybrid solution that integrates on-premises resources with Amazon's cloud services. For details about Progent's consulting support for Amazon AWS, see Amazon AWS cloud integration consulting.
Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) is an extensive library of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow businesses who sell via Amazon's online retail network to integrate their internal software applications for functions such as product listings, customer orders, payments, product fulfillment, and reporting with Amazon's services. By integrating internal applications and work flows with Amazon's online network, companies can extend their reach, reduce selling costs, create a better buying experience for their customers, and grow their profits. To find out more about Progent's software development consulting for Amazon MWS, visit to Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS) development and integration consulting.
Progent's Google Cloud Platform (GCP) integration consultants can provide affordable online and onsite support to assist businesses to migrate any part of their critical network resources to Google Cloud Platform services. This can save management hassle and hardware expense and allow the use of Google's state-of-the-art machine learning technology. Progent can help you with every phase of Google Cloud Platform integration including requirements analysis, preparedness evaluation, architectural design, testing, deployment, centralized administration, performance optimization, licensing management, disaster recovery solutions, and security.
Contact Progent for Cloud Integration Consulting
If you need help with any aspect of integrating your network with Microsoft Azure or other public cloud platform, call Progent at
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Wireless LAN Site Survey Online Technical Support
Information Technology Consulting Online Wireless Site Survey
Progent’s Wireless Site Survey helps you to plan and implement a wireless network adapted to your facilities, offering you a wireless solution that has the coverage, performance, load-handling capability, QoS, data protection, and roaming capability your business requires. Progent's Wireless Site Survey services are available either as an economical online service or as a more detailed onsite service.
Exchange Upgrade Engineer
Specialist Microsoft Exchange Server Migration
Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting engineers can help your organization to determine the value of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 for your business and can assist you to plan and carry out an efficient migration to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or Microsoft Exchange 2007 Server that will provide fast payback by increasing your workers' efficiency, lowering the expense of hardware and service, streamlining administration, and consolidating your key communications technologies.
Altaro VM Backup Planning Online Support
Configuration Altaro VM Backup Cloud Management
Altaro VM Backup provides small organizations a dependable and budget-friendly platform for backing up and restoring Hyper-V and VMware-based VMs. Altaro VM Backup can be deployed in on-premises, remote, multi-site, and cloud architectures and also enables low-cost cloud backup to Microsoft Azure Block Blob storage. Headline capabilities include industry-leading inline deduplication to reduce backup storage needs, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) with backup spacing as little as five minutes for reducing your Recovery Point Objective (RPO), advanced encryption, granular restore options for specific files and emails, extensive support for Windows CSV and for VMware vCenter for handling large-scale deployments, and support for Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to back up live virtual machines with zero downtime. Progent is an Altaro partner and offers a broad array of services to help you to design, install, optimize and troubleshoot a backup/restore solution based on Altaro VM Backup.
Fortinet 30 Series Firewalls Help and Support
Fortinet 400 Series Firewalls Computer Engineer
Fortinet FortiGate next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) are leaders in offering top performance for SSL/TLS inspection. Progent's Fortinet FortiGate firewall experts can assist you to configure your Fortinet firewalls to safeguard all your IT assets at the network perimeter, within the data center core, at branches, and in the cloud.
Juniper SSL VPN Network Intrusion Penetration Testing
Juniper SA2500 SSL VPN Security Firm
SSL VPN makes it possible to establish a secure Internet connection between an enterprise network and virtually any remote computer without the need for pre-installed client software. Progent's Juniper-certified consultants can help you design, manage, and troubleshoot SSL VPN solutions based on Juniper's AS Series of remote access appliances.
Remote Troubleshooting Fortinet 90 Series Firewalls
Integration Services Fortinet Firewall Integration
Fortinet FortiGate next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) are leaders in offering top performance for SSL inspection. Progent's Fortinet firewall consultants can assist your business to configure your Fortinet FortiGate security appliances to protect your digital assets at the network edge, within the data center core, at branches, and in the cloud.
CISSP-ISSAP Cybersecurity Architecture Consultants
24 Hour Cybersecurity Architecture Consulting Services
Progent's ISSAP Premier security consultants, or Information Systems Security Architecture Professionals, are experts who have been awarded ISSAP status through rigorous testing and extensive work with information security architecture. ISSAP consultants possess comprehensive understanding of access management systems and methodologies, phone system and network infrastructure security, cryptography, needs evaluation, business continuity planning (BCP) and disaster recovery planning (DRP), and physical security integration. Progent's ISSAP-certified security experts can help your business with all phases of architecture security.
PIX Firewall Remote Support Services
Cisco Security Support Services
Cisco's PIX 500 Series firewalls have reached end of life and Cisco may no longer offer support these devices. Progent still provides technical assistance for Cisco's PIX 500 firewalls to help you with maintenance and management and Progent can in addition help you assess if you should adopt next generation firewall technology from Cisco. Progent's Cisco technology experts can help your company plan and carry out an efficient migration to Cisco ASA 5500-X firewalls based on leading practices.
SharePoint Technical Support
Urgent SharePoint Server 2003 Technical Support
Progent’s Microsoft-certified experts can provide small and midsize companies computer consulting, maintenance, and troubleshooting services for Microsoft SPS 2003. Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server is an enterprise portal platform for efficiently connecting people, teams and data. SharePoint Portal Server offers a common spot for your workers or customers to connect to, organize, distribute and manipulate relevant information, documents, and software and to communicate with one another. It allows faster and more intelligent decisions, more efficient sharing across groups and more economical business practices. The primary goal of SharePoint Server is to bring together, in a productive way, all of the many sources of information accessible inside and without a business network. Windows SharePoint Services connect workers, clients, workgroups and projects with the knowledge they’ve developed in a way that makes data convenient to locate, retrieve and re-use.
Android and Windows 10 integration Remote Support Services
Network Consultants Android phone integration
Progent's veteran group of network consultants and subject matter experts have extensive experience providing online and on-premises assistance for organizations of all sizes who need to incorporate Android phones and tablets into their IT networks so that users can communicate and collaborate from virtually anywhere. Progent has the breadth of skills to solve technical problems that span multiple manufacturers and that entail a mix of legacy and current technology. Progent provides budget-friendly online consulting to help you with any facet of planning, implementing, managing and maintaining your BYOD environment. Progent can provide occasional support to assist you to resolve especially stubborn IT issues, or Progent can provide outsourced or co-sourced project management services to ensure that you complete strategic IT projects on schedule and within budget. Progent can assist with on-premises, cloud-centric, or hybrid networks and can provide support for all major operating systems, apps, management tools and network infrastructure. Progent also can provide specialized group or one-on-one training sessions to help you manage and use Android phones and tablets efficiently.
Consultant Services Dynamics GP SmartList Designer
Information Technology Consulting Dynamics GP Crystal Reports
Microsoft Dynamics GP software includes analysis and reporting capabilities that allow you to track all business processes, sales and expenses, and market patterns with integrated drill-down, inquiry, and reporting functions. Progent's Dynamics GP reporting consulting services can help you design reports that let you analyze your business more completely, turning raw data into useful business information. Progent can enhance your reporting and business analysis by providing Crystal Reports expertise, FRx support, and Microsoft Excel programming. In addition to offering reporting help, Progent can provide Microsoft .NET support, Microsoft SQL Server expertise, and programming design with VBasic, XML and other tools in order to deliver custom business application development and web commerce applications that integrate transparently with Microsoft Dynamics GP/Great Plains.
Amazon Marketplace Web Service Expert Development
Amazon Marketplace Web Service Programmer
Amazon Marketplace Web Service is an integrated library of APIs that allows Amazon sellers to streamline their operations by automating crucial sales activities including listings, orders, shipments, inbound and outbound fulfillment, and finances. By tapping into Amazon's extensive online ecosystem and automating their sales, vendors can broaden their market, reduce their operating costs, improve reaction time to customers, and increase their profits. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) developers can collaborate with your development team and provide application programming, workflow integration, project management support, and training to help you shorten development time and costs and speed up your return on investment.
CISM Certified Cybersecurity Management Specialist
CISM Certified Cybersecurity Cybersecurity Group
Progent can provide the support of CISM Premier security consultants. The Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) committee describes the core capabilities and worldwide standards of skill that information security professionals are expected to master. CISM provides executive management the assurance that consultants who have qualified for their CISM certification have the experience and capability to deliver effective security management and support services.
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