Network Help for Midsize Companies

Microsoft and Cisco Consulting Best Practices
Progent's staff of Microsoft and Cisco Certified consultants average more than a decade of real-world professional background, in the trenches of network support, performing a broad variety of technical tasks for an extensive array of clients. Every Progent support professional shares a refined set of best practices which are combined into shared best practices standards that Progent instills in its consulting team. This means that you get not just expert IT capability, but also a consultant with field-tested methods for applying technical knowledge to repair actual IT problems rapidly.

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent's team of network engineers is composed of among the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco experts in the industry. With more than a decade of real-world background for each consultant, Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier experts bring a tested set of methodologies for resolving technical problems, planning projects, and providing professional services. The technical depth of Progent's engineering staff enables Progent to offer your company a consultant with task-relevant skills and an effective approach for finding quick and affordable IT solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When appropriate, Progent utilizes a group approach to resolving the most stubborn network problems. By leveraging hundreds of man-years of background from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier experts, Progent can quickly and cost-effectively handle even the most challenging problems. Consulting with hundreds of clients and performing thousands of sophisticated implementation and integration projects every year gives Progent a unique perspective on which approaches work and which ones do not. Complex software interactions are a potential trap for even the most skilled consultants unless they have a long and varied history in real-world work with a broad range of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has incorporated the combined experience of its top engineering staff to develop an in-house, corporate-wide set of leading practices intended to ensure timely, affordable resolutions of information technology issues and to track and optimize customer satisfaction. These practices include a strong focus on client communication and services documentation. Progent's Founder and President, Les Kent, has a 35-year background of innovative network consulting, corporate management, sales and marketing, and administration. Progent's company-wide best practices are strongly influenced by Mr. Kent's background developing challenging technical solutions while acting as a system architect, software developer, task manager, implementation expert and troubleshooter.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As an authorized partner with Microsoft, Progent ensures that staff engineers participate in continued product and methodology education that includes important information and methods for technology integration that have been developed from the practice of thousands of technical experts worldwide. This results in continually more efficient provision of services to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's advanced service documentation system provides detailed documentation for all delivered services. Every Progent staff member has complete availability of all the details of support provided by any consultant to each customer. This database of issues and solutions, plus false alarms and miscues, is organized as an easily accessible internal information store that allows Progent's support professionals to share their experiences company-wide to ensure that the overall effectiveness of Progent's consulting services grows continuously. This support history also reduces your dependence on an individual engineer by making it possible for one Progent consultant to take up where another stopped while minimizing time spent getting ramped up on your network environment. Another benefit of Progent's support reporting database is that your company can more smoothly handle network support duties in house if it becomes cost-effective to do so, or you can migrate to another IT outsourcing firm if you grow dissatisfied with Progent's support.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For larger initiatives, Progent consultants use the Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology for providing support. MSF divides projects into distinct and manageable phases that reduce the risk of a project falling out of control. Every phase creates a strong foundation for the success of later phases. Planning and integration issues are identified early in the project continuum so problems can be pi pointed and dealt with before customer workflow is disrupted. This also prevents costs from spinning out of control due to unforeseen problems during large scale deployment. All project components are documented to create a comprehensive description of technical services provided and to help in ongoing network support.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As authorized support associates of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the industry's most extensive technical knowledge bases and resources. Among the most helpful support knowledge bases available to Progent's consultants are the industry best practices incorporated into the various Management Packs published by Microsoft and other vendors for use in conjunction with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the automated network monitoring software that is the foundation of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs consist of custom built processing rules that can react to events, performance margins, and warnings tracked by Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. Management Packs can also give valuable suggestions on how to handle certain problems by programmatically extracting appropriate articles from the vast Microsoft Knowledge Base.