Cloud Integration Solutions

Microsoft 365 (previously branded Office 365) is Microsoft's growing family of productivity applications and cloud services offered on a monthly or annual subscription basis. Microsoft 365 apps and Azure services are available in a selection of packages, known as subscription plans, intended for markets ranging from students and households to major enterprises.

Most Microsoft 365 applications can be deployed on a variety of computers including PCs, Apple Macs, iPads, and smartphones. Multi-device apps include versions of Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. PC-only applications include Access for database management and Publisher for desktop publishing. To accommodate customers with multiple devices, many Microsoft 365 subscription plans permit you to run Microsoft 365 apps on several devices. For example, Microsoft 365 Business and ProPlus packages permit each included app to be run on up to five customer devices.

Progent can provide fast and affordable remote access to a support consultant with expertise in Microsoft, Mac, iOS, and Google Android software. Progent can assist you to evaluate the numerous options offered with Microsoft 365 and integrate your information system with Microsoft 365 in a way that delivers the highest possible business value. Progent has experience supporting multi-vendor networks that include Windows, Apple macOS or OS X, and Linux technology. Progent can also assist you to implement and maintain hybrid environments that transparently integrate on-premises and cloud resources.

Microsoft 365 Apps and Cloud Services
Microsoft 365 subscription plans are designed to serve a broad selection of markets such as businesses of all sizes, education, state and local government, and home. Some subscription plans, like Microsoft 365 Business Essentials, has no applications but only cloud services. Other plans, like Microsoft 365 Business, includes applications but only the OneDrive cloud service. The top-of-the-line Microsoft 365 Enterprise E5 plan includes seven apps and seven cloud-based services. Progent can assist your organization to pick an Microsoft 365 bundle that's right for your situation, help you to migrate from outdated versions of Office applications, and help you streamline the management of Microsoft 365 and other system resources to build an efficient, secure and reliable IT ecosystem.

Key Microsoft 365 Apps
The obvious difference between Microsoft 365 apps and their corresponding Office releases is that Microsoft 365 applications are rented rather than sold. Also, traditionally licensed Office applications are supposed to be run on just a single device and are not patched automatically or replaced for free when a major edition is released. As an example, moving from Word 2013 to Word 2019 requires you to purchase a new license for Word. Incremental updates to Microsoft Office titles are made available to Microsoft 365 subscribers sooner than to users of perpetually licensed editions. Also, Office suites bought with a perpetual license do not come with any of the Azure-based services that are packaged with Microsoft 365.

Applications offered with different Microsoft 365 packages include:

Microsoft 365 Word includes the ability to create and view Office documents across Windows, Android, Mac, and iOS devices while presenting a consistent look and user experience. You can also collaborate on documents, see which colleagues are working on various shared projects, and see changes made by others in real time. Just as with Microsoft 365 Excel and PowerPoint, you can instantly share from within your documents. In addition, you can check who has permission to access a given document and who is now working on the document. For your own documents, you can quickly change edit rights. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Word consulting expertise.

Microsoft 365 Excel permits subscribers to employ the powerful Exponential Smoothing (ETS) algorithm to create forecasts for projecting future trends based on historical data. New linked data types that are tied to remote sources in real time include Stock and Geography. Stock downloads the latest stock price, change in price, and other stock market data. Geography enables you to designate a country and retrieve specified demographic or economic data like population or gas costs. As in the case of Microsoft 365 Word and Microsoft 365 PowerPoint, Microsoft 365 Excel also can handle Scalable Vector Graphics files. These can be rotated, colored, and scaled instantly with no loss in image quality. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Excel consulting services.

Microsoft 365 PowerPoint supports 3D models and features an expanded selection of animation functions like jumping and rotating. Like Office Excel and Word, Microsoft 365 PowerPoint enables you to convert sketches into uniform shapes for charts, diagrams, and various other objects. Microsoft 365 PowerPoint for Mac includes the ability to incorporate and edit movies from within PowerPoint. PowerPoint's Media Browser offers convenient access to a wide selection of sources such as iPhoto albums, iTunes playlists, and iMovie collections as well as standard shapes, Clip Art, and other graphical content.

Microsoft 365 Outlook provides significant improvements to prior releases of the Outlook email client app by introducing useful features such as the focused Inbox, automatic downloading of OneDrive attachments, display replies to a meeting invitation for people who are not meeting organizers, simplified email organizing, plus easier group creation and shared calendars. Additionally, Microsoft 365 Outlook users can hear their messages read audibly as the segments being read are highlighted. Microsoft's Office intelligent services, when activated, also allows Microsoft 365 Outlook subscribers to dictate emails. Microsoft 365 Outlook for Mac now supports push email, online archiving, the ability to propose a different meeting schedule in answer to a meeting request, and multiple calendar display. Full Screen Mode permits multiple open emails and enables users to run two Outlook instances in split-screen view. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Outlook and Outlook on the web configuration and troubleshooting services.

Microsoft 365 OneNote for Windows 10 is incorporated in most Microsoft 365 bundles, installed by default in Windows 10, and available for download as a no-cost mobile app. The older OneNote 2016 release, which includes features not at first available in OneNote for Windows 10 likes Record Video, continues to be available at no cost but is no longer being updated with new features. OneNote for Windows 10 introduces a new customizable interface common across Windows 10, Apple Mac, iOS, Android, and Web. Other functionality available exclusively on OneNote for Windows 10 include improved ink-to-text capability, an alert center that indicates modifications in your open and recent notebooks, automatic conversion of drawings into standardized shapes, and a digital ruler to create straight lines and make measurements.

Microsoft 365 Access, available exclusively on Windows PCs, allows you to use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and an extensive set of templates to automate business processes and create modern-looking forms and management reports. Microsoft 365 Access includes the connector library to extract data from a wide selection of popular business applications and data sources for creating aggregated reports from within the familiar Access interface. The ability to store Access data in both Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL provides an enterprise-class back end and SQL syntax for Access apps deployed either on premises or in the Azure cloud. Microsoft Access 365 now includes an updated Linked Table Manager, allows you to add new charts and management reports, and enables you to link or extract data from Salesforce and Dynamics 365. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Access development and training services.

Microsoft 365 Publisher, available exclusively on PCs, is a popular do-your-own desktop publishing system that takes advantage of the familiar Microsoft Office environment to deliver an intuitive platform for developing and sharing modern-looking documents like fliers and white papers that call for exact image placement control. Because documents can be saved to the cloud, you can deliver a document simply by providing a link. Publisher's popularity and ease of use make it possible to hit deadlines for time-sensitive jobs without needing rely on the availability of a desktop publishing specialist for making eleventh-hour edits.

Microsoft 365 Cloud Services
Microsoft 365 cloud services enable organizations to take advantage of Microsoft's extensive cloud infrastructure to host mission-critical servers like Exchange, Teams and Skype for Business. These services provide high levels of availability and protection while saving the substantial investment costs and management hassle required for setting up and maintaining self-sufficient on-premises computer facilities. For situations that call for some systems to be kept on-premises for compliance, performance, or other issues, the majority of Microsoft 365 server products can be deployed using hybrid architectures that transparently support on-premises and cloud resources.

Microsoft 365 Exchange Online offers email hosting and allows mailbox sizes ranging from 50 Gbytes to unlimited. Key features include custom email domain addresses, shareable calendars and contacts, the Outlook Web app, one-click archiving, and simple-to-create collaboration groups. The online Exchange admin center lets you manage email settings for your organization and provides full control over crucial areas including user rights, security and compliance, mail flow, making mailboxes and defining limits, collaboration, contact lists, Unified Messaging, monitoring and reporting, and backup. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and administration expertise.

Microsoft 365 OneDrive is Microsoft's popular file synchronization and share platform. Microsoft 365 subscription plans typically come with 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage, allowing you to save, access, and share data across Windows, Mac, or iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. By transparently syncing your files to your desktop, OneDrive allows you to revise documents even when you are not connected to the Internet. OneDrive facilitates sharing and collaboration, keeping track all changes to help prevent inconsistency issues. You can start a team project on any device and move smoothly to another device at any time. For advanced collaboration, a variety of utilities permit you to annotate and highlight shared documents. Powerful discovery tools enable you to find files quickly, and tracking tools offer useful information like how many people saw or shared a document.

Microsoft 365 Skype for Business offers cloud-hosted voice, HD video, and conferencing. Online Plan 1 includes IM, real-time presence, peer-to-peer VoIP, and video calling, plus federation and directory search. Online Plan 2 adds pre-scheduled and on-demand conferencing with A/V calling as well as screen and app sharing on iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets, PCs, and Mac computers. For hybrid environments that integrate an on-premises Skype for Business Server with Skype for Business Online services, you can create a seamless environment via a Split Domain deployment. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Skype for Business Online planning and configuration consulting.

Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online integrates information management with intranet publishing to enable businesses to broadcast and share knowledge and to promote teamwork. SharePoint's admin center now includes interactive usage analysis, Message Center posts, and a Service Health dashboard designed to streamline management. In addition, you can link current SharePoint team sites to Microsoft 365 Groups, expanding your existing SharePoint sites with shared conversations, schedules, and project planning. Features to support cloud integration now include hybrid taxonomy and hybrid auditing as well as an enhanced development architecture for creating SharePoint environments on-premises, in hybrid implementations, and in Microsoft 365. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online configuration and development services.

Microsoft Teams is the successor of Skype for Business, offering a unified portal for meetings, contact lists, and information with persistent threaded chat, file sharing, plus built-in voice and video conferencing. Microsoft has enhanced the cloud architecture supporting Teams so it can provide quicker meeting join times than Skype and to enable integration with Cognitive Services like transcription, translation, speech recognition, and machine learning. Progent can assist you to test Microsoft 365 Teams to evaluate the advantages of adopting this next-generation communication technology. Learn about Progent's Microsoft Teams solution design services.

Microsoft 365 Yammer is a social network product designed to be used within an organization and restricted to clients who have an authorized corporate email address. Postings can include files, links, videos, PowerPoint presentations, and SharePoint pages. The Discovery feed makes it easy to find information relevant to your work or concerns as indicated by the groups you belong to, discussions you follow, and people you interact with. You can locate conversations, files, interest groups, participants, and other items associated with a particular colleague. Group Insights inform you how events like posting, viewing, and liking are trending over time. Notifications inform you about relevant activity such as updates in your groups, comments in your conversations, and new followers.

Microsoft 365 Power BI is a stack of online services integrated with Microsoft 365 that enables you to create sharable dashboards and on-demand management reports that offer up-to-date consolidated views into vital facets of your business. Microsoft 365 Power BI dashboards can aggregate information from a broad array of local and outside sources such as Excel, on-premises SQL Server Analysis Service, the Azure cloud, or popular sources like Zendesk, Google Analytics and Salesforce. Dashboards and reports developed on Power BI can be updated in real time via data streaming. You can save and distribute your visualizations in the cloud using Microsoft 365 OneDrive. Native Power BI mobile applications are available for Windows devices plus iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Power BI Online design and development consulting and training.

Planning Services for Microsoft 365 Migration
Progent can provide the services of a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Architect to help you to design a smooth move to Microsoft 365 tailored to your IT environment. Before proposing this migration plan, Progent's cloud expert will conduct a set of investigative exercises that include running tools such as IdFix, the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA), and custom scripts for reviewing your Active Directory, messaging, and Mobile Device Management environment. Critical information that cannot be found with these methods will be determined via discussions with your IT staff.

Activities performed by Progent in creating an optimal Microsoft 365 migration plan can include:

• Lead a Project Kickoff discussion with your IT staff to agree upon project goals, services to be utilized, client and contractor responsibilities, schedules, etc.
• Create a Risk and Issue Tracking document.
• Develop an Exchange Hybrid migration plan explaining how new services and required changes to the IT environment will be implemented.
• Review the current Azure Active Directory Connect Identity Management configurations and identify any gaps.
• Identify and develop a plan for mail-enabled applications such as multifunction printers, monitoring systems, and other systems that currently submit SMTP messages.
• Create end-user communication to be sent out by your Help Desk.
• Identify current Exchange mailbox volume and item counts to help strategy for email migrations.
• Examine your network bandwidth reports to verify there is sufficient bandwidth and nominal latency to accommodate Microsoft 365.
• Review your current Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution to ensure it will align with the Microsoft 365 services and features.
• Utilize Microsoft's IdFix utility to identify potential Active Directory problems and uncover reused SMTP addresses and user principal names (UPNs), invalid characters and formatting for object attributes, and UPNs that have non-routable domains.
• Lead an Architecture Review session with your IT team to identify problems that could prevent a successful migration.
• Develop a plan to permit email to be sent to Dynamic Distribution Groups.
• Provide a list of ports and IP ranges for creating firewall rules.
• Work with you to identify any mailboxes that have been granted elevated rights to another mailbox.
• Create an implementation plan that details the processes associated with migrating to Microsoft 365.

Progent's ProSight family of Remote Management and Monitoring (RMM) Services
Progent provides a selection of low-cost, fixed-price managed services intended to enable small and mid-size businesses to utilize the same advanced technology used by many of the industry's top corporations. Progent's ProSight portfolio of network monitoring and management services covers all key facets of information technology including email protection, threat defense based on machine leaning, automated backup/recovery, infrastructure health monitoring, virtual server hosting, and IT resources documentation management. Learn more about Progent's remote management and monitoring (RMM) services.

Get in Touch with Progent for Microsoft 365 Integration and Support
If you are trying to find a Microsoft 365 consultant, call Progent at 800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.

Public Cloud Integration Services from Progent
The options available for public cloud services are expanding rapidly, making it difficult for IT managers to determine the optimum cloud solution for their business. Progent has in-depth experience assisting businesses of all sizes to design, implement, and maintain hybrid networks that combine multiple cloud products and services from major public cloud providers. Progent's cloud integration experts can help you to assess the comparative benefits and shortcomings of competing public cloud offerings and can help you create a cloud-based or hybrid network that provides maximum business value.

Public cloud products supported by Progent's consultants include:

Progent's Azure integration consultants can help you with every stage of Microsoft Azure integration such as needs definition, prerequisites evaluation, solution architecture, pre-production testing, deployment, centralized management, performance tuning, license controls, disaster recovery strategies, security policy enforcement, and regulatory compliance validation. Progent can help you to configure and debug firewall appliances and VPN connections so your clients can safely access to Azure resources, and Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting experts can help you integrate critical Microsoft technologies to run in the cloud including Windows Server, Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint. Progent can also assist you to set up a hybrid environment that seamlessly combines physical datacenters with Azure-based resources.

Microsoft has made a strong effort to enable seamless hybrid networks that integrate Microsoft 365 Exchange Online and on-premises installations of Exchange. This allows you to have specific mailboxes hosted on your on-premises datacenter and other mailboxes hosted by Microsoft 365. Progent's Microsoft-certified Exchange consultants can help you with any facet of planning, implementing and troubleshooting your hybrid Microsoft 365/Exchange network. Progent's Exchange specialists can deliver as-needed support to help you through challenging technical bottlenecks and also can provide extensive project management outsourcing to make sure your hybrid Microsoft 365/Exchange initiative is successfully completed on schedule and on budget. To find out more about Progent's consulting services for hybrid Microsoft 365 Exchange and on-prem Exchange systems, go to Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration solutions with on-premises Exchange.

Progent's Amazon AWS cloud planning and integration experts offer affordable online consulting to assist companies of any size to integrate Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services such as Amazon EC2 for virtual machine hosting, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for scalable low-latency storage, and Glacier for low-cost long-term archiving. Progent can help you with every phase of Amazon AWS migration and troubleshooting including needs analysis, readiness evaluation, architectural design and review, testing, configuration, administration, performance tuning, software license management, disaster recovery solutions, and security. Progent can provide advanced expertise with firewalls and VPN connections and can help you deploy cloud-centric or hybrid environments that efficiently incorporate Amazon AWS cloud services. Progent can provide as-needed expertise or Progent can provide project management outsourcing to help you migrate smoothly to the Amazon AWS cloud.

Amazon Marketplace Web Service is an integrated collection of APIs that enables Amazon sellers to streamline their business processes by automating crucial sales activities including listings, orders, shipments, fulfillment, and finances. By tapping into Amazon's extensive online ecosystem and automating their sales, vendors can broaden their market, lower their operating costs, accelerate reaction time to customers, and add to their bottom line. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service developers can work with your development staff and provide programming, workflow integration, project management support, and training to help you cut development time and costs and get to market quickly.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform (GCP) planning and integration consultants can provide cost-effective remote and onsite consulting to assist organizations of any size to move any portion of their critical network infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform services. This can save time and equipment costs and enable the use of Google's state-of-the-art machine learning tools. Progent can assist your IT team with every aspect of Google Cloud Platform integration including requirements analysis, readiness assessment, system design, testing, configuration, administration, performance optimization, software license management, disaster recovery mechanisms, and security strategies.