Cloud Solutions

Microsoft Exchange Online is one of several cloud-based applications in the Office 365 product line enabled by Azure. Exchange Online provides the benefits of reduced investment in physical infrastructure, simplified administration, on-demand capacity, data protection, plus other benefits inherent with public clouds instead of on-premises datacenters. Microsoft has designed Exchange Online to operate transparently with local deployments of Exchange, allowing you to create hybrid environments. Hybrid environments include local resources with cloud-based products and services to produce a cohesive IT solution.

Typical reasons for combining on-premise Exchange installations with Office 365 Exchange Online include adherence to government or industry mandates or corporate policies that prevent specific types of mailboxes from being hosted off site, performance issues associated with server virtualization or cloud latency, the desire for more administrative flexibility, the ability to accommodate certain non-standard or outdated environments, company culture, or recovery plans. In addition, hybrid systems are commonly implemented for migrating safely from an on-premises to an Office 365 Exchange Online cloud-based environment.

If you want a temporary hybrid Exchange Online implementation as part of a migration to the cloud or you intend to create a robust hybrid network model, Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting team are available assist you with any stage of designing, configuring, managing, and debugging your hybrid solution. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide occasional assistance to help you through challenging integration issues and also can provide end-to-end project management outsourcing to ensure your hybrid Office 365 Exchange Online implementation is performed on schedule and within.

Progent's Exchange Server consultants have extensive experience teaming with Microsoft's Office 365 support personnel to fix complex integration problems and Progent can provide on-going support to assist your business to manage and tune your hybrid Exchange Online solution as your requirements evolve. Progent is a Microsoft Partner with two decades of experience delivering companies of all sizes high-level consulting support online, and Progent also offers onsite support in metro areas throughout the U.S. (Refer to Progent's client testimonials.)

Hybrid Solutions for Office 365 Exchange Online
A hybrid implementation of Office 365 Exchange Online and on-premises Exchange supports a combination local and cloud mailboxes and offers other important features such as:

• Secure mail routing with a domain namespace and an Outlook on the Web address shared between on-premises and Office 365 cloud organizations
• A shared global address list (GAL) with complete recipient information
• A shared free/busy calendar
• Management of inbound and outbound mail flow across Office 365 cloud networks organizations
• Easy movement of mailboxes between local Exchange and Exchange Online including Exchange ActiveSync profile redirection
• Local Exchange Administration Center for centralized mailbox management
• Multi-mailbox search on local and Office 365 mailboxes
• Exchange Online Archiving for local and Office 365 mailboxes
• Transparent incorporation with on-premises and cloud-based implementations of Skype for Business and SharePoint server
• Support for Microsoft Edge Transport server to filter out junk mail and apply mail flow transport policies
• Single sign-on via Azure Active Directory Connect, password sync, or Active Directory FS
• AD FS integration allows multi-factor authentication and meets FIPS

Office 365 can be deployed under several hybrid architectures. Careful analysis with Progent's network design consultants can save significant time and expense, since re-architecting a poorly conceived deployment can be difficult and distracting. Creating an optimal hybrid Office 365 Exchange Online ecosystem can be challenging. The complexity depends on the makeup of your current email environment and the functionality you intend to achieve. Basic tasks are:

• Decide on your strategic requirements for your hybrid Exchange Online deployment
• Evaluate your current network resources and update as necessary
• Design and test your new network architecture
• Design an implementation process and select migration tools
• Identify local vs. Office 365 users
• Choose required cloud services and purchase licenses
• Add and verify the domain of the cloud portal
• Update DNS records
• Use IdFix to resolve local Active Directory issues found by Azure AD Connect and configure on-premises Active Directory and optionally AD FS
• Configure single sign-on and Directory Sync
• Assign licenses and create Accounts/mailboxes in Office 365
• Export mailboxes to PSTs and import them from PSTs to Exchange Online mailboxes
• Integrate smartphones and tablets
• Move public folders
• Verify services ,li>Optimize performance
• Update and test firewalls and proxy servers
• Educate network support staff and users

Microsoft offers an assortment of tools to help you to automate most of the steps required to create a hybrid environment for Exchange Online. These tools include the Hybrid Configuration Wizard, Windows PowerShell, the Exchange admin center, the Office 365 Deployment Readiness tool, and the IdFix tool. Realistically, many parts of configuring a hybrid Office 365 solution are subject to technical missteps. Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants have worked at length with issues related to designing and rolling out hybrid Office 365 Exchange Online projects and can show you how to you follow leading practices to avoid common issues, resolve them quickly, and shield your users from downtime.

How Progent Can Help You to Integrate Office 365 Exchange Online with Your Local Network
Progent's consultants can assist you in every stage of moving to Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online and combining your on-premises Exchange implementation with cloud-hosted Exchange. Progent can assist you to prioritize your operational objectives, evaluate the suitability of your existing network infrastructure, plan the architecture for a hybrid environment, create a deployment process, set up and test a pilot deployment, configure your hybrid system, automate administrative functions, tune performance, organize licenses, provide consulting for disaster recovery plans, assess regulatory compliance, and provide training for your network management team and clients. Progent offers affordable online consulting services to help you to deal with occasional technical issues, or Progent can provide end-to-end project management outsourcing services to help you complete your hybrid integration of Office 365 on time and on budget.

In addition to Office 365, Microsoft offers other software packages within the Office 365 product line. These include Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business Online, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Project Online. All of these applications can be integrated with one another in cloud-centric or hybrid implementations. Progent's Microsoft-certified Office 365 integration experts can help you to build hybrid solutions that incorporate Office 365 products and local infrastructure by delivering advanced services such as Windows Server consulting, Exchange expertise, Microsoft Teams upgrade support, Skype for Business management and troubleshooting, SQL Server integration and software development, SharePoint planning and integration, Office 365 integration and user training, Microsoft Project expertise, and Dynamics GP maintenance.

To assist you to manage your hybrid deployment, Progent can provide System Center 2016 consulting services, System Center Data Protection Manager expertise, SCOM expertise, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) support, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) hybrid cloud management expertise,

Typical examples of remote and on-premises consulting support offered by Progent's experts to assist organizations to combine Office 365 with local Exchange deployments include:

• Tidy up email before moving them into Exchange Online
• Configure authentication with Office 365 and local Domain Users
• Configure Exchange Online and allocate licenses
• Reconstruct profiles of Windows users
• Move Gmail accounts
• Carry out manual mailbox migrations when necessary
• Register email accounts to iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets
• Specify and implement Office 365 Archiving
• Set up on-premises or hybrid spam filter gateways from third-party vendors
• Correct Office 365 sync problems with Active Directory clients and Active Directory Global Security Groups
• Troubleshoot Outlook autodiscover problems
• Resolve issues related to .PST and .OST files
• Define, implement, test, and troubleshoot mail flow
• Troubleshoot Active Directory Federation Services and AD Connect authentication issues
• Deploy PowerShell for administration, repair, and email migration
• Work with Microsoft support technicians to identify and repair problems at Microsoft's end (e.g., a corrupted Connector)
• Debug message encryption issues
• Update on-premises Exchange Servers to current versions of Exchange and upgrade equipment
• Train Human Resources on procedure to disable accounts for departed workers

Other Cloud Integration Solutions from Progent
The options available for public cloud services are increasing rapidly, making it a serious challenge for IT managers to select the right cloud strategy for their organization. Progent has in-depth experience helping businesses of all sizes to plan, implement, and manage hybrid environments that combine various cloud products and services from leading public clouds. Progent's cloud integration consultants can help you to evaluate the comparative benefits and pitfalls of competing public cloud options and can show you how to build a cloud-centric or hybrid ecosystem that provides maximum business value.

Public cloud products supported by Progent's consultants include:

Progent's Microsoft Azure cloud integration consultants can help you with every aspect of Azure cloud migration such as needs analysis, prerequisites evaluation, system design, pre-production testing, implementation, automated management, performance optimization, license controls, disaster recovery strategies, security planning, and regulatory compliance assessment. Progent can help your IT staff to configure and debug firewalls and VPN tunnels so your clients can securely access to Azure services, and Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can assist you set up critical Microsoft technologies to work in the cloud including Microsoft Windows Server, Exchange, SQL and SharePoint. Progent can also assist you to set up a hybrid ecosystem that transparently integrates on-premises datacenters with Azure services.

Progent's Microsoft Office and Office 365 consultants can help businesses of any size to incorporate Microsoft Office desktop and Microsoft Office 365 applications including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Access, Visio and OneNote into a seamless solution that provides fast return on investment and promotes improved business outcomes. Progent can assist your company to interface Microsoft Office or Office 365 applications with each other and with other key Microsoft technologies including SharePoint Server, Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server deployed on-premises or in the cloud. Progent can also help you to resolve compatibility problems with different versions of Microsoft Office desktop and can provide live online Microsoft Office and Office 365 instruction to individuals or teams.

Progent's Amazon AWS cloud planning and integration consultants can provide cost-effective online consulting to help businesses to access Amazon AWS cloud services such as Amazon EC2 for virtual server hosting, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for scalable cloud storage, and Glacier for low-cost long-term archiving. Progent can assist you with every aspect of Amazon AWS integration including needs analysis, readiness assessment, system design and review, testing, configuration, centralized administration, performance tuning, licensing management, disaster recovery mechanisms, and security strategies. Progent can provide advanced expertise with firewall configuration and VPN connections and can show you how to deploy cloud-centric or hybrid environments that efficiently incorporate Amazon AWS resources. Progent can provide as-needed consulting or Progent can deliver comprehensive project management outsourcing or co-sourcing to help you move efficiently to the Amazon AWS cloud platform.

Amazon Marketplace Web Service is an integrated collection of APIs that allows Amazon sellers to improve the efficiency of their business processes by automating key sales functions such as listings, orders, shipments, inbound and outbound fulfillment, and finances. By tapping into Amazon's vast online ecosystem and automating their sales, vendors can broaden their market, lower their operating costs, accelerate reaction time to customers, and increase their profits. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service consultants can collaborate with your development team and provide application programming, workflow integration, project management support, and training so you can shorten development time and costs and get to market quickly.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform (GCP) planning and integration experts can provide cost-effective online and onsite consulting to assist organizations of any size to move any part of their critical network infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform services. This can save management hassle and hardware expense and allow the use of Google's cutting edge machine learning technology. Progent can help you with every phase of Google Cloud Platform migration and troubleshooting including needs analysis, preparedness evaluation, architectural design, testing, configuration, centralized administration, performance tuning, software license management, disaster recovery mechanisms, and security and compliance.