Progent has helped organizations of all types and sizes to design, implement, and administer networks that use a range of hybrid models that mix Azure cloud-based infrastructure and services with local datacenters, private clouds, and other public clouds like Amazon AWS or Google Cloud Platform. Progent is unique in the ability to offer immediate and affordable online help from IT consulting experts to assist you to evaluate the potential benefits of different Azure products and services for your particular business. Progent's virtualization experts can assist you to set up virtual machines on Azure Virtual Machines. Progent's certified data security consultants can help you centralize identity management with Azure Active Directory. Progent's data protection experts can assist you to configure backup/recovery solutions with Azure Backup. In addition, Progent's VPN and firewall experts can show you how to set up secure and dependable connections to Azure.
About Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure, formerly called Windows Azure, is a leading public cloud service that lets you utilize network infrastructure, servers, and key applications hosted on Microsoft's vast cloud. The Azure ecosystem supports over 100 cloud-based services such as hosting Windows and Linux-powered VMs, on-demand storage, messaging, application development, and backup/recovery. Microsoft Azure services are delivered by subscription and provided dynamically, so organizations can instantly ramp up or ratchet down compute and data storage resources. Since you are billed only for the computer resources you consume, efficiency is high, which is the key of cloud computing.
Popular Microsoft Azure Cloud Services
Microsoft Azure provides dozens of infrastructure and PaaS products and many hundreds of cloud services. This growing set of cloud-based services addresses practically all areas of IT including processing, data and storage, network infrastructure, management, security, web, mobility, business applications, and software development. Additional popular offerings like Office 365 Exchange Online rely on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. (Visit Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online consulting and troubleshooting consulting services.)
Key Microsoft Azure offerings for which Progent provides advanced consulting expertise and troubleshooting include:
Azure Virtual Machines hosting service allows organizations to deploy, expand and administer virtual machines on the Azure cloud. Your Azure Storage account provides storage for the operating system disk and any data disks. Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines supports Windows Server, major distributions of Linux, IBM, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server, and other popular platforms. Various classes of VMs are available and priced according to CPU power, memory size, and I/O latency. You can access Microsoft Azure VMs through Remote Desktop Connection. The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) features of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines permits you to run Windows applications such as SQL Server, Exchange Server, and SharePoint plus mainstream Linux distributions like Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu, and RancherOS.
The enhanced deployment model for Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines, branded Azure Resource Manager and introduced in 2014, supersedes what is now known as Azure Classic and offers streamlined virtual machine management by supporting VM groups with a common lifecycle. Before, Azure cloud services for provisioning, scaling, and administering virtual machines had to be performed individually. Resource Manager deployment features include Azure Portal, Azure Resource Manager template, Azure PowerShell, and Visual Studio support. Progent's Azure specialists can help you build and administer Azure solutions quickly and economically by delivering expertise with these technologies for supporting Azure Virtual Machines.
Azure Storage offers on-demand scale and automatic load balancing for primary storage on the Azure cloud. A General Purpose Storage account provides Azure subscribers access to storage services for Blobs, Tables, Files, Queues, and VM disks. Every storage account has a 500 terabyte capacity limit. For faster performance, you can subscribe to a Premium storage class and operate virtual machine applications on solid state disks.
Azure Blob storage for General Purpose Storage accounts is intended for large volumes of unstructured data such as documents, social media, backups, web content, log files and Big Data. Blobs are arranged as containers, which makes it easy to assign security policies to groups of objects. To transfer blobs that are too massive to move via the Internet, you can mail a physical drive to Microsoft.
A special class of Blob Storage is intended for apps that use only block or append blob storage. You can specify frequently used or infrequently used access characteristics for block and append blobs (not page blobs). Being able to define data access characteristics in Microsoft Azure storage accounts allows you to establish the right balance between price and speed.
Table storage is economical storage designed for developers creating non-relational metadata like address lists, device information, or web applications. Table Storage supports the OData protocol for advanced querying and supports JSON and XML-based AtomPub formats. Queue storage helps in the creation of messaging apps by supporting asynchronous exchanges between software components across cloud and physical systems. Microsoft Azure File storage accommodates SMB file shares, which streamlines moving legacy apps to the Azure cloud.
Microsoft Azure Active Directory is a cloud directory and identity management service that enables password synchronization and single sign-on (SSO) across on-premises and cloud-hosted environments. Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) is built into Office 365, Salesforce.com, DropBox, Dynamics CRM Online, and thousands of other popular apps. Features include multi-factor authentication (MFA), endpoint registration, password synchronization across cloud and local environments, group management, role-based access control, auditing, security monitoring, and alerts. Azure AD integrates seamlessly with your Windows Server Active Directory to make it simple to combine on-premises and cloud identities. Azure provides advanced reliability by locating your directories on at least three separate datacenters.
The Microsoft Azure AD Connect tool has superseded Windows Azure DirSync, Azure AD Sync (AAD Sync) and Forefront Identity Manager as the recommended means to integrate on-premises directories and synchronize identity data with AD, Office 365 and SaaS cloud apps.
Azure Backup is an automated backup service for offsite backup of local, cloud-resident, and hybrid cloud/local data. Three copies of backup data are stored in one Azure facility, and three more copies of target data at additional cost be stored in a geographically separate Azure location. Microsoft offers Service Level Agreements for 99.9% availability, and archiving in Azure is available for as long as 99 years. You can schedule backups for daily, monthly, weekly, and yearly periods, and recovery time is quicker and less expensive than traditional tape technology. Backups are encrypted before to transmission over a protected link to the Azure cloud, and backups are retained in their encrypted state. The encryption key is kept locally for better compliance. Additional features include throttling to utilize off-peak hours, data compression to improve throughput and reduced storage requirements, and incremental backups to save bandwidth. Azure Import/Export allows you to perform your seed backup on-premises and deliver a physical drive to the closest Azure datacenter.
Azure Backup integrates closely with System Center Data Protection Manager to offer specialized support for Microsoft's mission-critical platforms including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Hyper-V. Data Protection Manager works seamlessly with Windows Hyper-V VSS to protect VMs without disrupting their accessibility. DPM also offers product-specific granular restore capability like mailbox restoration for Exchange, database-level recovery for SQL Server, and ILR for SharePoint Server. Azure Backup environments integrated with SCDPM can be tracked with System Center Operations Manager to watch over system health, throughput, and efficiency.
How Progent's Experts Can Help You with Microsoft Azure Integration
If you want to migrate your organization's IT infrastructure to the Azure cloud or build a hybrid ecosystem that combines on-premises and cloud-based resources, Progent can help you assess the advantages of the Microsoft Azure line of products and services compared to other public clouds or alternative networking strategies such as using colo centers. Progent can assist you with every stage of Azure migration including benefits analysis, solution planning, proof of concept, deployment, centralized management and monitoring, performance tuning, software license control, disaster recovery strategies, security planning, and regulatory compliance analysis.
Progent can assist you to decide which of your line-of-business applications are a good fit for Azure and help you make your legacy applications are cloud compatible. Progent can provide affordable as-needed expertise so you can immediately deal with stubborn technical hurdles or Progent can deliver end-to-end project management outsourcing expertise to make sure your Azure integration initiative is successfully completed on schedule and within your budget.
To help you implement centralized management of a hybrid cloud network that incorporates Azure services, Progent can provide System Center consulting services including SCDPM consulting, System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) support services, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) consulting, SCVMM hybrid cloud management expertise, and Microsoft Intune mobility management consulting.
Hybrid cloud networks must furnish a secure, manageable, user-friendly, and resilient environment for user to connect to both on-premises cloud-based resources. Progent has a wealth of experience configuring VPN tunnels and setting up or debugging firewalls to connect to Azure. Progent can provide fast remote access to Cisco-certified CCIE infrastructure experts and to firewall experts certified by top suppliers such as Symantec, Barracuda, and Check Point to help 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 iPhone and iPad technology experts and Google Android connectivity experts to help you to set up and manage smartphones and tablets that utilize your Microsoft Azure environment. If you come up against problems with your Azure solution, Progent has experience teaming with Microsoft's Azure technical personnel to fix problems with Azure.
Common samples of online expertise Progent has provided to organizations to help them integrate and manage their Azure-connected networks include:
Additional Cloud Platforms Supported by Progent
Products and services available on public clouds are expanding rapidly in volume and sophistication. Selecting the right solution can be a challenge. Most large businesses have hybrid networks that utilize multiple public cloud and at the same time maintain corporate facilities. Office 365 family of applications, including Exchange Online and Skype for Business Online, depend on Azure infrastructure and provide alternative paths to Azure's IaaS products. Progent can provide guidance for your organization to evaluate the potential benefits of the services offered by. many options available from the leading cloud vendors and help you plan, configure, and administer IT ecosystems that include a mix of public and private clouds plus on-premises datacenters.
Additional public clouds supported by Progent's experts include:
Microsoft supports transparent hybrid environments that integrate Microsoft 365 Exchange Online and on-premises Exchange deployments. This allows you to have some Exchange mailboxes hosted at your physical datacenter or private cloud and other mailboxes hosted by Microsoft 365. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can assist you with any facet of planning, integrating and debugging your hybrid Microsoft 365/Exchange solution. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide as-needed expertise to help you resolve challenging technical issues and also offer extensive project management outsourcing to make sure your hybrid Microsoft 365/Exchange initiative is completed on schedule and on budget. For more information about Progent's online consulting expertise for hybrid Microsoft 365 Exchange and on-prem Exchange environments, go to Exchange Online integration solutions with on-prem Exchange.
Progent's certified Office and Microsoft 365 experts can help businesses of any size to integrate Microsoft Office desktop and Microsoft 365 applications such as Excel, Office Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Visio and Publisher into a seamless solution that offers quick return on investment and promotes better business outcomes. Progent can help your company to interface Office or Microsoft 365 applications with each other and with other core Microsoft technologies including SharePoint, Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server running on-premises or hosted in the cloud. Progent's consultants can also assist you to resolve compatibility issues between various releases of Office desktop and offers customized online Office and Microsoft 365 training to individual users and groups.
Progent's Amazon AWS cloud integration experts offer affordable online support to help companies to integrate Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services including Amazon EC2 for virtual machine hosting, Amazon S3 for scalable high-performance storage, and Glacier for low-cost long-term archiving. Progent can assist your IT team with every phase of Amazon AWS integration including needs analysis, preparedness assessment, architectural design, pilot testing, deployment, centralized administration, performance optimization, software license management, disaster recovery mechanisms, and security strategies. Progent can provide advanced expertise with firewall configuration and VPN technology and can help you deploy cloud-based or hybrid environments that seamlessly integrate Amazon AWS resources. Progent can provide occasional consulting or Progent can deliver project management outsourcing or co-sourcing services to help you migrate efficiently to the Amazon AWS cloud.
Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) is a library of APIs that enables Amazon sellers to streamline their business processes by automating crucial sales functions such as listings, orders, payments, inbound and outbound fulfillment, and reports. By leveraging Amazon's vast online selling environment and automating their sales, vendors can broaden their reach, lower their operating costs, accelerate reaction time to customers, and add to their bottom line. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service consultants can collaborate with your development team and provide programming, workflow integration, project management support, and mentoring to help you shorten development time and costs and speed up your return on investment.
Progent's Google Cloud Platform planning and integration consultants can provide cost-effective online and onsite consulting to assist organizations of any size to move any portion of their critical network resources to Google Cloud Platform services. This can save management hassle and equipment costs and allow the use of Google's cutting edge AI and machine learning tools. Progent can assist you with every phase of Google Cloud Platform integration including requirements analysis, readiness assessment, system design, testing, configuration, administration, performance optimization, licensing management, disaster recovery solutions, and security strategies.