Expanding your at-home workforce may have a major impact on network infrastructure, cybersecurity, and company culture. Progent has two decades of experience assisting small and mid-size businesses to plan, deploy, administer, optimize, and troubleshoot IT networks that incorporate work-from-home employees. Progent can assist your Montreal organization to pick the right tools and follow leading practices in creating and maintaining a safe virtual office ecosystem for telecommuters that facilitates collaboration and returns top business value. Progent offers support services that go from on demand guidance for helping you past challenging IT bottlenecks to full project management or co-management to help you successfully complete business-critical tasks.

Progent's consultants can assist Montreal, Quebec organizations to succeed with any facet of building a high-functioning telecommuting environment by delivering network infrastructure design and configuration services, VoIP PBX expertise, voice/video conferencing integration, collaboration platform selection and deployment, cloud connectivity, Call Desk services, security and compliance, data protection solutions, and unified management.

Infrastructure for Teleworkers
Setting up the network infrastructure required for a remote workforce can be particularly challenging if you must accommodate a combination of personal hardware like PCs and laptops, Internet routers, and Wi-Fi appliances from an assortment of manufacturers and with a variety of OS software and firmware releases. Progent's experience providing remote help for both legacy and modern IT products in virtual office venues allows you to make cost-effective use of your existing infrastructure and offers fast access to top-tire consultants for making necessary upgrades. Services available from Progent to assist you to implement a productive work-at-home ecosystem include:

  • Virtual Private Network technology allows you to establish a secure tunnel for authorized remote workers to use IT resources situated at your corporate data center or in a public cloud. Progent can assist you to configure and manage VPN access between your teleworkers and your key network resources by providing online VPN integration support. For businesses using Cisco's ASA firewalls, Progent's Cisco-certified ASA Firewall experts can help your remote workers to set up Cisco's popular AnyConnect software to provide secure VPN connections for a broad selection of devices such as Windows, Mac, Apple iOS, Linux, and Google Android.
  • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure platforms allow a teleworker to view and interact with a data center computer's desktop. This gives network managers significant control over the computing environment of telecommuters and ensures them a consistent and more productive work experience. Progent's virtual desktop services include Windows Remote Desktop support and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI expertise.
  • Routers connect at-home networks to the Internet and support VPN connections, home Wi-Fi connectivity, and firewall services. Progent can provide expert remote consulting for configuring home routers from all major manufacturers. See router configuration services from Cisco-certified experts.
  • Home Wireless networks, typically shared by an entire household and guests, are commonly used by telecommuters to access their router for work. This can create performance and cybersecurity issues. Progent can help you to resolve these issues by delivering services that include Cisco Aironet configuration expertise, Cisco-certified Meraki WiFi installation consulting, and Ubiquiti wireless AP integration assistance.
  • Internet connectivity methods affect the speed and reliability of connections between telecommuters and the company data center. Vital processes might demand redundant Internet access in the event the primary connection breaks. Progent offers guidance for identifying ISPs, choosing appropriate bandwidth and data volume packages, and configuring redundant Internet access. Refer to Internet connectivity integration services.

VoIP Integration for Remote Workers
Extending the corporate PBX system to accommodate remote users is critical to supporting a productive at-home workforce. A broad range of cloud-based digital PBX products are used by small and mid-size businesses to server teleworkers. Many enterprises rely on Cisco's current or legacy platforms for VoIP solutions. Progent can help organizations of all sizes to plan or maintain a remote VoIP service that provides the versatility, convenience and protection required for telecommuters. Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE Voice experts offer high-level support to help businesses optimize their existing Cisco VoIP systems to handle an expanding at-home workforce.

  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco Unified CM or CUCM) delivers advanced telephony capabilities to devices like IP phones, media processing products, Voice over IP gateways, and multimedia applications deployed across the network. CUCM supports other combined media services like unified messaging, voice/video conferencing, and team interaction networks. For details about Progent's Unified Communications Manager support, see CUCM consultants.
  • Cisco CallManager is Cisco's legacy call-processing software and has been superseded by Cisco Unified CM or CUCM. Progent can help you to maintain your existing CallManager environment or upgrade efficiently to Cisco's current IP telephony solutions. For details about Progent's support services for Cisco CallManager and Cisco's other older VoIP platforms, refer to CallManager consulting.
  • Cisco IP Gateways provide connectivity with PSTN networks and with clients working outside the corporate firewall such as telecommuters. Progent can provide consulting expertise for Cisco's earlier generation IP gateways like the UC520, UC540 and UC560 product lines and for modern Cisco SIP gateways. See Cisco SIP gateway integration expertise.
  • Other VoIP Platforms supported by Progent include Vonage, RingCentral and 8x8. Progent can help you to enhance your WAN infrastructure to work with these VoIP solutions and provide on-demand integration and troubleshooting services.

Voice/Video Conferencing for Teleworkers
A wide range of voice/video conferencing products from major vendors support online discussions, video conferencing, chat, and content sharing for both onsite workers and teleworkers. Many companies use multiple conferencing products to accommodate their various partners and clients. Progent can assist your organization to manage your existing voice/video conferencing ecosystem and optimize the engagement of your at-home workforce.

  • Skype for Business is Microsoft's popular unified communications platform that enables presence, IM, audio and video calling and conferencing plus the seamless integration of these capabilities within Office desktop and Microsoft 365 applications including PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. Progent offers the expertise of Microsoft-certified consultants who can help you to set up and manage Skype for Business clients to support your at-home employees. For details about Progent's consulting services for Skype for Business, see Skype for Business integration services.
  • FaceTime is Apple's multiuser video calling app for compatible iOS and Mac devices. FaceTime works over Wi-Fi or cellular Internet connections. Current editions of FaceTime support as many as 32 concurrent users for voice/video sessions. To learn more about Progent's consulting expertise for FaceTime, refer to Progent's FaceTime configuration expertise.
  • Webex Meeting Center supports remote conferencing for most desktop or mobile devices. Delivered through Cisco's Webex Cloud, Webex capabilities include sharing specific content or screens, presentations that embed rich media including Microsoft PowerPoint and Flash videos, network-based capture, plus editing and playback for training. To learn more about Progent's consulting expertise for Cisco Webex as well as for other IP video solutions from Cisco, refer to Progent's Webex Meeting Center support services.
  • Teams is Microsoft's next-generation replacement for Skype for Business. Teams provides a portal for conferencing, contacts, and information with features that include IP voice and video conferencing, persistent threaded chat, plus data sharing. For details about Progent's consulting expertise for Teams as well as for additional Microsoft 365 apps, visit Progent's Microsoft Teams consulting services.
  • Additional Voice/Video Conferencing Platforms supported by Progent include Google Meet, Amazon Chime, Zoom, and Slack. Progent can deliver integration and debugging expertise for these products and help your business to optimize your network architecture to host them.

Microsoft Collaboration Software for Telecommuters
Microsoft's collaboration platforms are closely integrated with Microsoft's familiar Office and Microsoft 365 families, providing a powerful ecosystem of applications that deliver a consistent user experience for sharing data and ideas across a corporate network and on a wide selection of endpoint devices. Progent has provided remote consulting support for SharePoint and Exchange since their first publication and can help your company to configure these flagship collaboration platforms to maximize the productivity of your remote workforce.

SharePoint Deployment Consultants for At-Home WorkersSharePoint uses web entities to allow collaboration and knowledge delivery by offering policy-based access to data, workflow, and utilities for searching through company-wide business data. SharePoint allows you to create secure web portals that permits remote workers to see and update aggregated business intelligence via Intranets (Wikis), Blogs, social networking web sites, and Web Parts (Widgets). To find out about Progent's SharePoint expertise, go to SharePoint integration and application development expertise.

Exchange Integration Experts for At-Home WorkersExchange 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. For details about Progent's Exchange consulting services, see deployment consulting for Exchange Server.

Microsoft Onedrive Configuration Consultants for Remote WorkersOneDrive is Microsoft's shared cloud-based storage service, comparable to GoogleDrive. Remote workers can store files to the OneDrive service, and colleagues can share them safely via a browser. Provided with Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365, OneDrive enables at-home employees to jointly author documents. Revisions created offline are automatically uploaded when you reconnect to the Internet. For information about Progent's consulting expertise for OneDrive, see Microsoft Onedrive configuration consulting.

Public Cloud Integration Services for Remote Workers
Progent can provide fast and affordable remote assistance for enabling businesses to create, maintain and optimize cohesive network architectures that combine internal data centers, remote workers, branches, and cloud resources. Progent can provide expertise for all modes of public cloud service delivery including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service. Progent can help at-home workers fix issues with public cloud connectivity, authentication, and security.

Azure Integration for TeleworkersAzure is a popular family of cloud software and services that allows you to use infrastructure, servers, and critical apps hosted on Microsoft's extensive cloud. Microsoft Azure offers over one hundred services services including the ability to host Windows and Linux-powered virtual machines, on-demand cloud storage, messaging, application development with Visual Studio, and data backup. Progent can assist your organization to set up VMs on Azure Virtual Machines, integrate cloud-based storage on Azure Storage services, unify identity control with Azure AD, and design backup and restore solutions with Azure Backup. Progent's cloud experts can also show you how to create secure access to Azure for at-home workers by configuring and troubleshooting firewalls and VPN tunnels. For information about Progent's expertise for Microsoft Azure, go to Azure consulting.

Microsoft 365 Integration Services for At-Home WorkersMicrosoft 365, formerly branded Office 365, is Microsoft's growing family of client productivity applications and cloud services offered by subscription. Office apps and services are provided in a variety of bundles intended for customers ranging from students and small offices to major enterprises. Progent can provide fast and affordable remote contact with consultants knowledgeable about Microsoft 365-compatible devices based on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Google Android technology. Progent can assist your business to evaluate the various subscription plans offered with Microsoft 365 and configure 365 applications for your remote workers to achieve maximum business value. To find out about Progent's consulting expertise for Microsoft 365, visit Microsoft 365 integration support.

Exchange Online Integration Services for At-Home WorkersMicrosoft 365 Exchange Online is among the most popular applications in Azure-hosted Microsoft 365 product line. Exchange Online offers the benefits of lower spending for physical infrastructure, easier management, dynamic scaling, high reliability, and additional benefits inherent with public clouds. Microsoft has designed Exchange Online to operate smoothly with local deployments of Exchange, enabling you to create hybrid cloud/onsite networks. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide as-needed help to guide you past challenging technical roadblocks and also offer end-to-end project management services to ensure your telecommuters have easy and safe access to your Exchange Online deployment. For details Progent's expertise for Exchange Online, visit Microsoft 365 Exchange Online configuration and troubleshooting expertise.

Amazon AWS Integration Services for At-Home WorkersAmazon Web Services (AWS) is a pioneer in the public cloud computing market and is the industry's leading source of cloud services. Progent offers rapid and affordable online access to cloud integration experts who can help your business to plan, implement, maintain, and troubleshoot hybrid IT networks that incorporate Amazon AWS cloud services with local data centers and with other public clouds such as Azure. Progent also offers access to Cisco-certified CCIE networking consultants to assist you to build a high-uptime network model so your employees have a productive computing environment regardless of whether they are working from your headquarters, a remote branch, at home, or on the move. To find out about Progent's consulting services for Amazon AWS, see Amazon AWS consulting services.

Google Cloud Integration for TeleworkersGoogle Cloud (GCP) is a popular set of cloud computing services that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service products. Progent's Microsoft, Linux, and Cisco experts can assist you to expand your current IT resources with the Google Cloud Platform, and Progent's database experts can show you how to make your key applications cloud friendly so your telecommuters can take full advantage of Google Cloud services. Progent can assist your organization to deploy virtual machines on GCP Compute Engine, design an efficient storage solution with Google Cloud Storage services, and streamline access control for remote workers with GCP Cloud Identity. Progent's consultants can also help your organization to use GCP's management tools to control and track your GCP ecosystem. For details, go to Google Cloud Platform integration support.

Help Desk Support for At-Home Workers
A fast, enterprise-wide transition to a teleworker workforce, which could be motivated by a pandemic or as a component of a business continuity preparedness plan, can overstretch even a high-performing internal Call Desk. Progent's Help Desk Call Center services make it possible for organizations of any size to outsource or expand their Help Desk by using Progent's online Technical Response Center services.

  • Progent's Standard Help Desk Call Center services utilize Progent's nationwide network of online technical support experts along with world-class trouble ticketing and tracking technology to provide an economical, modern Call Center. Progent's Standard Help Desk Services offer a comprehensive solution that handles all facets of online Level 1 desktop support from service requests through trouble ticket generation, screen sharing, problem resolution, and reporting. A web-based User's Service Portal enables teleworkers to monitor or edit the status of their current tickets, enter details, and append screen captures and attachments. Support services are provided at a significant price reduction off Progent's normal Level 1 technical service charges, and Progent offers the option of fast escalation to Level 2 and Level 3 IT specialists to resolve complex problems. For details, go to Progent's Standard Helpdesk Services for small and mid-size companies.
  • Progent's Help Desk Supplemental Service allows your company to supplement your current Help Desk team by splitting delivery of Call Center support seamlessly between your in-house IT support organization and Progent's extensive pool of PC support engineers and subject matter specialists. Progent's shared Help Desk Call Center service uses a collective support model based on the leading PSA tool for handling service requests and trouble tickets, establishing ownership, monitoring progress, and generating reports. For details about how Progent's Support Desk Supplementation Services can enable your business to deliver best-in-class desktop support to your from-home workers, see Progent's Help Desk Call Center augmentation Services.

Cybersecurity for Remote Workers
Work-from-Home (WFH) workers commonly use their own devices and often operate in an unsecured physical area. This increases their vulnerability to cyber attacks and requires judicious configuration of corporate firewalls, anti-malware tools, MFA-based identity verification, remote monitoring, intensive user education, and the development of policies based on best practices. Progent's veteran roster of cybersecurity solutions consultants can help your business to plan, configure and maintain an effective security solution that guards critical information assets in networks that incorporate remote workers.

Firewall Integration Services for At-Home WorkersFirewalls allow companies to create a network that can be securely utilized by local users and by teleworkers, mobile employees, suppliers, clients, and other stakeholders. Modern firewall devices allow you to assign and control appropriate access rights to different groups of users and to expand your network and modify your security profile as your company evolves and as network attacks become more sophisticated. Progent works with both new and older security devices from all major vendors including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, Juniper, and Fortinet. To learn more about Progent's firewall support services, go to firewall integration and support services.

Remote Endpoint Monitoring Services for At-Home WorkersRemote Endpoint Monitoring makes it easy to track the various devices utilized by teleworkers and either reject or identify and mitigate the latest threats such as ransomware. With ProSight Active Security Monitoring services, a lightweight software agent is put on every protected endpoint device, monitoring all activity and using state-of-the-art machine learning from SentinelOne to detect new threats before they can spread. When an attack is spotted, ProSight Active Security Monitoring instantly disconnects the targeted endpoint device from the corporate network to contain the malware. Because the ProSight ASM agent is self-contained, endpoints remain protected even when they are not connected to the Internet. Progent is a SentinelOne Partner, dealer, and integrator. For more information about ProSight Active Security Monitoring, refer to remote endpoint security monitoring for at-home workers.

Two-factor Authentication Services for TeleworkersProgent's Duo MFA managed services utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against password theft by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo supports one-tap identity confirmation on iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. With Duo 2FA, when you sign into a secured application and give your password you are requested to verify who you are via a device that only you have and that uses a different ("out-of-band") network channel. A wide selection of out-of-band devices can be used for this second form of ID validation such as a smartphone or wearable, a hardware token, a landline telephone, etc. You can designate several verification devices. To find out more about ProSight Duo two-factor identity validation services, see Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for an at-home workforce.

Security Audit Services for At-Home WorkersSecurity Audits can evaluate the exposure of your network to all classes of external and internal security threats for an environment that includes at-home workers. Progent can run remote, automated security analysis software for rapidly and economically detecting a broad range of security weaknesses that can be surfaced via the Internet. Progent's endpoint security audit consulting services, which can be managed by network security professionals with advanced credentials such as CISA, CISSP, and GIAC, can help your business to evaluate your processes and governance policies and review your WAN architecture to enable you to implement the highest level of protection for your at-home workers.

Download White Paper: Securing a Work-From-Home Environment
To read or download a white paper describing critical areas to concentrate on for protecting a network that incorporates telecommuters, click:
Protecting a Work-From-Home (WFH) Environment White Paper. (PDF - 2.4 MB)

Data Protection Solutions for Teleworkers
Data Protection covers backing up and restoring vital data so as to prevent data loss and reduce recovery time in the event of storage system problems due to equipment breakdowns, software glitches, human error, malware, or other causes. Reliable data protection solutions can be particularly challenging to architect and maintain in hybrid networks that incorporate private data centers, cloud resources, and at-home workers.

  • Backup/Recovery solutions for telecommuters must address multiple kinds of personally owned endpoint devices. Progent offers fast online access to consultants familiar with a wide array of platforms for backing up Windows, Apple and Linux/UNIX servers and desktop computers as well as laptops, iOS and Android tablets and smartphones. Popular backup/restore solutions maintained by Progent's data protection consultants include Barracuda Backup, Microsoft Azure Backup, DoubleTake Software, CrashPlan, Retrospect, and Time Machine. To protect data distributed across a wide area network, Progent can provide ProSight Data Protection Services, a managed backup/recovery subscription service that uses cloud storage and includes granular recovery and unified management.
  • Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity plans typically envision circumstances that require a temporary switch to telecommuting. Progent's expert disaster recovery planning experts and business continuity planning specialists can help your company to create, document and validate a DR/BC strategy that includes the logistics of switching to an at-home workforce.

Unified Management for At-Home Workers
Microsoft has renamed and reshuffled its endpoint management platforms under the title Endpoint Manager, which encompasses Intune for cloud-based management of mobile and remote devices and Configuration Manager for managing local endpoints. Endpoint Manager provides a unified environment for safeguarding critical data by managing local, mobile, and home-based endpoint devices.

Microsoft Intune
Intune is a component of Microsoft's Endpoint Management suite that also includes Configuration Manager. Intune is a cloud-based service for managing and protecting off-premises computers and software. Remote endpoint computers can be personally owned or business owned. Network administrators managing the endpoint devices of telecommuters can use Intune to provision and validate apps on devices, push patches and certificates, set up policies for permission to access information and resources, manage passwords, create VPN connections, determine how home-based workers share data, set up threat protection, verify security compliance, and delete sensitive data from missing, stolen or deactivated endpoint devices. Intune works with iOS/iPadOS, Android, Windows, and macOS computers. To find out about Intune and how Progent can assist you to use this platform to administer the devices of your at-home workforce, see Intune telecommuter device management experts.

VMware Workspace ONE
VMware Workspace ONE is an advanced unified MDM platform that helps network administrators to keep remote endpoints up to date and protected. Workspace ONE uses VMware AirWatch technology for centralized endpoint administration plus VMware's Horizon virtual software delivery platform for authorization control, app management, and configuration management of endpoint devices. Workspace ONE runs with endpoints powered by Windows 10, macOS, Apple iOS, Android, Chrome OS, or leading distros of Linux. VMware Workspace ONE is available by subscription as a cloud service or as an on-premises product through a one-time purchase. Key capabilities of VMware Workspace ONE include fast over-the-air deployment of new laptops, immediate onboarding of new employees, policy set up and enforcement for all categories of devices, aggregated reporting and performance analytics, email encryption, and integration with Microsoft applications and cloud services. To learn about Progent's support services for VMware Workspace ONE, refer to VMware Workspace ONE mobile endpoint management expertise.

Contact Progent for At-Home Worker Expertise
To get in touch with Progent about creating and maintaining an efficient work-from-home environment for your Montreal, Quebec company, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.