Computer Network Outsourcing for Midsize Companies

Microsoft and Cisco Consulting Best Practices
Progent's team of Microsoft and Cisco Certified consultants average longer than a decade of hands-on professional background, in the trenches of network support, performing a broad range of technical tasks for an extensive mix of businesses. Each Progent support professional shares a refined collection of best practices which are combined into company-wide best practices standards that Progent instills in its consulting team. This guarantees that you get not just expert IT capability, but also a support engineer with proven methods for using computer knowledge to fix actual network problems rapidly.

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent's staff of IT engineers is made up of among the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco experts in the industry. Averaging more than a decade of professional experience for each consultant, Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier experts bring a tested set of methods for resolving network issues, managing projects, and delivering professional services. The technical scope of Progent's support team allows Progent to provide your business a consulting expert with task-relevant skills and an effective technique for delivering quick and inexpensive IT solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When required, Progent utilizes a team technique to resolving the most stubborn technical issues. By aggregating hundreds of person-years of experience from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Certified professionals, Progent can quickly and cost-effectively handle even the most challenging issues. Working with hundreds of customers and completing thousands of sophisticated implementation and integration projects every year offers Progent a special view on which techiques work and which ones do not. Complex software interactions are a minefield for even the most talented engineers unless they bring a long and varied background in hands-on experience with a broad variety of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has incorporated the combined experience of its top engineering staff to develop an in-house, company-wide set of leading practices designed to promote fast, cost-effective solutions of technical issues and to track and maximize client satisfaction. These practices include a powerful focus on customer communication and services documentation. Progent's Founder and CEO, Les Kent, has a 35-year background of innovative technology consulting, business management, marketing, and operations. Progent's company-wide best practices are strongly driven by Mr. Kent's experiences developing challenging information technology solutions while working as a system designer, software developer, task manager, deployment expert and diagnostic engineer.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As a certified partner with Microsoft and Cisco, Progent makes sure that staff engineers participate in ongoing product and methodology training that contains important information and methods for new product integration that have been developed from the experience of thousands of computer experts around the world. This promotes continually more effective delivery of support to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's advanced service documentation system provides detailed documentation for all provided services. Each Progent staff consultant has complete access to all the details of support provided by any consultant to every customer. This database of problems and solutions, plus false alarms and missteps, is arranged as readily searchable internal information store that enables Progent's consultants to communicate their knowledge company-wide so that the overall efficiency of Progent's support grows continuously. This support history also reduces your reliance on an individual consultant by allowing one Progent consultant to pick up where another stopped while minimizing hours spent getting up to speed on your information system environment. Another benefit of Progent's service reporting system is that your business can more smoothly take on IT support duties internally if it becomes cost-effective to do so, or you can move to another consulting company if you grow unhappy with Progent's support.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For larger projects, Progent engineers follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) model for providing service. MSF separates projects into discrete and manageable components that reduce the risk of a project falling off track. Every step builds a strong foundation for the success of later phases. Design and integration issues are identified at the start of the project continuum so difficulties can be anticipated and resolved before client workflow is disrupted. In addition, this prevents expenses from spinning out of control because of unforeseen problems during large scale roll outs. All phases are recorded to build a detailed database of technical services provided and to assist in ongoing system support.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As certified consulting partners of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the world's most extensive technical databases and resource pool. Some of the most helpful support databases available to Progent's consultants are the industry leading practices built into the assorted Management Packs published by Microsoft and third parties to be used in conjunction with Microsoft Operations Manager, the proactive network monitoring platform used as the foundation of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs (MPs) consist of custom built scripted rules that can react to events, thresholds, and warnings monitored by Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. MPs can also provide expert suggestions on how to handle specific problems by programmatically extracting relevant articles from the vast Microsoft support database.