Cloud Integration Consulting

Progent has helped businesses of all types and sizes to plan, configure, and administer networks that use a range of hybrid models that combine Microsoft Azure cloud-based resources with local facilities, private clouds, and additional public clouds like Amazon AWS or Google Cloud Platform. Progent is unmatched in the ability to offer fast and affordable online help from Technology consulting experts to assist you to evaluate the potential advantages of various Azure products and services for your specific business. Progent's virtualization consultants can help you to plan and configure VMs on Azure Virtual Machines. Progent's certified data security experts can help you centralize identity management with Azure Active Directory. Progent's data protection experts can assist you to plan backup/recovery solutions based on Azure Backup. In addition, Progent's VPN and firewall experts can help you set up safe and reliable connections to Azure.

About Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, formerly called Windows Azure, is a popular public cloud platform that lets you utilize IT infrastructure, servers, and key applications residing on Microsoft's vast public cloud. The Azure ecosystem offers dozens of cloud-based services such as the ability to host Windows and Linux-powered VMs, scalable cloud storage, messaging, development, and backup/recovery. Azure services are available by subscription and allocated as-needed, so organizations can instantly scale up or ratchet down compute and data storage resources. Because you pay only for the capacity you consume, efficiency is very high, which is the key of cloud computing.

Key Microsoft Azure Cloud Services
Microsoft Azure offers more than 60 IaaS and PaaS options and hundreds of cloud services. This expanding set of cloud-based services addresses virtually all facets of IT including processing, data and storage, network infrastructure, administration, cybersecurity, web hosting, mobile, business applications, and software development. Additional popular offerings such as Office 365 Exchange rely on Azure network infrastructure. (Visit Office 365 Exchange Online integration and troubleshooting consulting services.)

Key Microsoft Azure offerings for which Progent provides high-level expertise and troubleshooting services include:

Azure Virtual Machines hosting service allows you to configure, expand and manage virtual machines on the Azure cloud. An Azure Storage subscription provides storage for the OS disk and associated data disks. Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines supports Windows Server, major distributions of Linux, IBM, Oracle Database, and additional platforms. Different categories of virtual machines (VMs) are available and priced according to processor power, memory capacity, and I/O throughput. You can access Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines via Remote Desktop Connection. The PaaS functionality of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines allows you to run Windows applications such as SQL Server, Exchange Server, and Microsoft Dynamics as well as major Linux distributions like Red Hat, CentOS, CoreOS, and RancherOS.

The enhanced deployment model for Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines, branded Azure Resource Manager, replaces what is now known as Azure Classic and enables more efficient virtual machine management by supporting VM groups with a shared lifecycle. Before, Microsoft Azure cloud services for deploying, sizing, and administering VMs had to be handled individually. Resource Manager deployment options include a cloud portal, Azure Resource Manager template, Azure PowerShell, and Azure Tools for Visual Studio. Progent's Azure specialists can help you create and administer Azure environments efficiently and affordably by delivering expertise with all these tools for managing Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines.

Microsoft Azure Storage delivers dynamic scale and automatic load balancing for primary storage on Azure. An Azure General Purpose Storage account gives Azure clients the use of storage services for Blobs, Tables, Files, Queues, and virtual machine disks. Every storage account includes a 500 TB capacity limit. For faster performance, you can subscribe to Azure's Premium storage tier and run virtual machine applications on SSDs.

Azure Blob storage for General Purpose Storage accounts is intended for large volumes of unstructured object data such as documents, social media, backups, web content, log files and Big Data. Azure Blobs are arranged as containers, which makes it simpler to assign security policies to groups of objects. To export blobs that are too massive to upload via the Internet, you can ship a drive to Microsoft.

A special class of Blob Storage is available for applications that use only block or append blob storage. You can specify Hot or Cool access patterns for block and append blobs (but not for page blobs). The ability to specify data access characteristics in Azure storage accounts enables you to arrive at the right trade-off between price and performance.

Table storage is low-cost storage designed for developers creating NoSQL metadata like address lists, device information, or web apps. Table Storage works with the OData protocol for querying and allows JSON and XMLd AtomPub formats. Queue storage facilitates the creation of messaging solutions by handling asynchronous exchanges between software components across cloud and physical systems. Azure File storage accommodates SMB shares, which streamlines moving legacy apps to the Azure cloud.

Microsoft Azure Active Directory is a cloud directory and identity control service that provides password synchronization and single sign-on across local and cloud-hosted environments. Azure AD is incorporated in Office 365, Salesforce.com, DropBox, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, and thousands of other popular applications. Features include multi-factor identification, endpoint registration, self-service password management across cloud and local systems, group management, role-based access control (RBAC), auditing, security monitoring, and alerts. Microsoft Azure AD works transparently with Windows Server Active Directory to make it easy to unify local and cloud authentication. Azure offers high availability by locating your directories on at least three geo-dispersed facilities.

The Microsoft Azure AD Connect tool has superseded Windows Azure DirSync, Azure AD Sync and Forefront Identity Manager as the recommended means to connect local directories and synchronize identity information with AD, Office 365 and SaaS cloud-hosted apps.

Azure Backup is a managed cloud-based backup service that simplifies offsite backup of on-premises, cloud-resident, and hybrid environments. Three backups are stored in a single Azure datacenter, and three additional copies can optionally be housed at a different Azure location. Microsoft offers SLAs for 99.9% reliability, and archiving in the Azure cloud can be as long as 99 years. You can schedule backups for daily, monthly, weekly, and yearly cycles, and restoration is faster and less expensive than old-school tape-based solutions. Backups are encrypted before to being sent over a protected connection to the Azure cloud, and backups are stored in their encrypted state. The encryption key is stored and managed locally for better security compliance. Additional features include throttling to take advantage of off-peak hours, data compression to improve performance and lower storage requirements, and incremental backups to save bandwidth. Azure Import/Export allows you to perform your initial backup locally and send a physical storage device to the closest Azure datacenter.

Azure Backup can be integrated seamlessly with System Center Data Protection Manager to provide in-depth support for Microsoft's key workloads including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint Server, and Windows Hyper-V. Data Protection Manager works seamlessly with Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Services to backup virtual machines without interrupting their operation. DPM also offers product-specific granular restore features such as mailbox recovery for Exchange, database-level recovery for SQL Server, and Item Level Recovery for SharePoint Server. Azure Backup environments integrated with SCDPM can be tracked with System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to watch over system health, performance, and efficiency.

How Progent's Experts Can Assist You with Microsoft Azure Integration
If you intend to move your network to the Azure cloud or build a hybrid ecosystem that integrates on-premises and cloud-based resources, Progent's consultants can help you evaluate the advantages of the Azure line of services vs. other public cloud platforms or alternative networking strategies such as using colo centers. Progent can help you with any and every stage of Microsoft Azure migration such as ROI analysis, system design, pilot testing, configuration, centralized management, performance optimization, license control, disaster recovery strategies, security planning, and regulatory compliance validation.

Progent can assist you to determine which of your mission-critical applications are appropriate for Microsoft Azure and help you make your legacy applications are cloud compatible. Progent offers affordable as-needed expertise so you can quickly deal with stubborn technical roadblocks or Progent can deliver end-to-end project management consulting expertise to make sure your Azure integration initiative is completed on schedule and within your budget.

For setting up centralized management of a hybrid environment that includes Azure services, Progent offers Microsoft System Center consulting services including SCDPM expertise, System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) support services, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) expertise, System Center Virtual Machine Manager hybrid cloud management expertise, and Microsoft Intune mobile device management consulting.

Cloud-integrated networks have to provide a secure, manageable, seamless, and reliable way for user to access both on-premises cloud-based applications and services. Progent has extensive experience configuring VPN connections and implementing or debugging firewalls to link to Azure services. Progent can provide rapid remote access to Cisco-certified CCIE network consultants and to firewall experts certified by top vendors like Symantec, Barracuda, and SonicWall to help you to set up or debug firewalls for integrating your local network with Azure. Progent also supports mobile users by offering the skills of Apple iPhone and iPad technology consultants as well as Android connectivity experts to help you to set up and manage smartphones and tablets connected to your Azure environment. When you come up against glitches with your Azure solution, Progent has extensive experience teaming with Microsoft's support engineers to resolve issues with Azure.

Typical samples of remote consulting services Progent has provided to businesses to help them build and manage their Azure-connected information systems are:

• Configure and debug IPsec VPN tunnels forremote access to Azure
• Plan or review the system architecture of hybrid Azure/on-premises environments
• Create Virtual Machine images for Windows or Linux systems to be hosted on Azure
• Configure Azure AD, Azure AD Connect, and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
• Design and validate data protection systems that utilize Azure Backup
• Prep and debug virtual hard disks (VHDs) for Microsoft Azure
• Specify and implement security rules
• Identify and resolve issues with IP addresses
• Resolve synchronization problems associated with Office 365
• Configure, update, and debug firewalls from Cisco, Barracuda, SonicWall and other security appliance vendors
• Configure Cisco AnyConnect technology for accessing Azure products and services
• Simplify license management
• Resolve issues with certificate management
• Select and set up unified management, monitoring and reporting utilities across hybrid environments
• Set up Configuration Manager to deploy applications
• Configure SCVMM on premises and on Azure
• Design and implement hybrid Exchange deployments
• Tune query performance on SQL Server running on Microsoft Azure
• Move Citrix XenDesktop to the Azure cloud
• Resolve PowerShell problems for uploading modules to Azure

Other Public Cloud Services Supported by Progent's Cloud Integration Experts
Products and services offered on leading public clouds like Azure are growing rapidly in number and complexity. Selecting the best options can be a challenge. The majority of large businesses have hybrid networks that utilize multiple public cloud and also manage corporate datacenters. Microsoft's Office 365 line of apps, including Exchange Online, depend on Azure infrastructure and provide alternative paths to Azure's Infrastructure-as-a-Service products. Progent can help you to assess the potential advantages of the services offered by. many options available from the major public clouds and show you how to design, configure, and administer IT ecosystems that incorporate an assortment of public and private clouds along with physical local datacenters.

Other public clouds supported by Progent's experts include:

Microsoft has made a strong effort to enable seamless hybrid networks that combine Office 365 Exchange Online and on-premises installations of Exchange. This permits you to have specific Exchange mailboxes located on your on-premises datacenter and other mailboxes resident on Office 365. Progent's certified Exchange consultants can assist you with any facet of designing, implementing and troubleshooting your hybrid Office 365/Exchange network. Progent's Exchange specialists can deliver occasional expertise to help you through stubborn technical bottlenecks and also can provide extensive project management outsourcing or co-sourcing to make sure your hybrid Office 365 solution is carried out on schedule and on budget. To find out more about Progent's consulting expertise for integrating Office 365 and on-premises Exchange systems, go to Exchange Online integration with on-premises Exchange.

Progent's Office and Office 365 consultants can assist companies to integrate Office desktop and Microsoft Office 365 applications such as Office Excel, Office Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Project and Publisher into a seamless productivity solution that provides fast return on investment and promotes improved business results. Progent can help you to interface Office or Office 365 applications with each other and with other core Microsoft platforms such as SharePoint Server, Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server running on-premises or in the cloud. Progent can also help you to resolve compatibility problems between different versions of Office desktop and can provide customized online Microsoft Office and Office 365 instruction to individuals and teams.

Progent's Amazon Web Services (AWS) integration experts offer cost-effective online support to assist companies to access Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services such as Amazon EC2 for virtual server hosting, Amazon S3 for scalable low-latency storage, and Glacier for value-priced archival storage. Progent can help you with every aspect of Amazon AWS integration including requirements analysis, readiness assessment, system design, pilot testing, configuration, centralized administration, performance optimization, software license management, disaster recovery mechanisms, and security and compliance. Progent can provide advanced expertise with firewalls and VPN access and can show you how to create cloud-centric or hybrid environments that efficiently incorporate Amazon AWS services. Progent can provide occasional support or Progent can provide comprehensive project management outsourcing to help you move efficiently to the Amazon AWS cloud platform.

Amazon Marketplace Web Service is a library of APIs that allows Amazon sellers to streamline their business processes by automating key sales functions such as listings, orders, payments, inbound and outbound fulfillment, and reports. By tapping into Amazon's vast online ecosystem and automating their sales processes, merchants can expand their market, lower their operating costs, improve reaction time to customers, and add to their profits. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service consultants can collaborate with your development staff and provide application programming, workflow integration, project management support, and training so you can cut development time and get to market quickly.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform integration experts offer affordable remote and on-premises consulting to assist companies of any size to migrate all or part of their critical network infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform services. This can save time and hardware costs and enable access to Google's cutting edge AI and machine learning technology. Progent can assist your IT team with every aspect of Google Cloud Platform integration including needs analysis, preparedness evaluation, architectural design and review, testing, configuration, centralized administration, performance optimization, software license management, disaster recovery solutions, and security.