Cloud Integration Expertise

Exchange Online is one of several cloud-hosted applications included in the Office 365 product line enabled by Microsoft Azure. Exchange Online provides the benefits of lower spending for hardware infrastructure, simplified management, on-demand scale, data protection, and other advantages associated with public clouds instead of local IT facilities. Microsoft has engineered Exchange Online to operate transparently with on-premises deployments of Exchange, allowing you to build hybrid environments. Hybrid networks include on-premises resources with cloud-based products and services to produce a unified IT solution.

Typical motives for combining local Exchange installations with Exchange Online include adherence to government or industry mandates or business restrictions that prevent specific types of mailboxes from being hosted off premises, throughput requirements associated with server virtualization or cloud connectivity, the desire for greater administrative flexibility, the ability to support certain non-standard or legacy systems, company culture, or recovery strategies. In addition, hybrid systems are typically on the critical path for moving smoothly from a local to an Office 365 Exchange Online cloud-centric model.

If you need a temporary hybrid Exchange Online implementation to carry out a migration to the cloud or you want to create a robust hybrid environment, Progent's Microsoft-certified experts are available help you with any facet of planning, integrating, administering, and debugging your hybrid solution. Progent's Exchange consultants offer occasional assistance to guide you through stubborn technical issues and also can provide comprehensive project management outsourcing or co-sourcing to make sure your hybrid Office 365 Exchange Online implementation is performed on time and within.

Progent's Exchange consultants have extensive experience teaming with Microsoft's Office 365 technical support staff to resolve complex technical problems and Progent offers as-needed support services to assist you to manage and enhance your hybrid Exchange Online ecosystem as your requirements change over time. Progent is a Microsoft Partner with 20 years of background providing companies of all sizes high-level consulting services online, and Progent also offers onsite support in major metropolitan regions throughout the U.S. (Refer to Progent's client testimonials.)

Hybrid Solutions for Exchange Online
A hybrid implementation of Exchange Online and onsite Exchange supports a mix of local and cloud mailboxes and brings other key features including:

• Secure mail routing with a domain namespace and an Outlook Web address shared between local and Office 365 organizations
• A shared global address list (GAL) with complete recipient details
• A shared availability calendar
• Management of inbound and outbound mail travel across Office 365 cloud organizations organizations
• Simple movement of mailboxes between on-premises Exchange infrastructure and Office 365 Exchange Online including Exchange ActiveSync profile redirection
• Local Exchange Administration Center for unified mailbox management
• Multi-mailbox search across local and Exchange Online mailboxes
• Office 365 Archiving for on-premises and Office 365 mailboxes
• Transparent incorporation with on-premises and/or cloud-based deployments of Skype for Business and SharePoint server
• Support for Microsoft Edge Transport server to protect against spam and apply mail flow transport rules
• Single sign-on (SSO) via Azure Active Directory Connect, password sync, or Active Directory Federation Services
• AD FS allows multi-factor authentication and meets FIPS

Office 365 Exchange Online supports several hybrid architectures. Careful analysis with Progent's solution design consultants can save you considerable effort and expense, since re-architecting a poorly conceived deployment can be difficult and distracting. Building an optimal hybrid Office 365 solution can be challenging. The degree of difficulty depends on the design of your existing email environment and the functionality you want to have. Basic steps include:

• Define your essential requirements for your hybrid Exchange Online deployment
• Evaluate your existing infrastructure and modernize as necessary
• Plan and validate your new system infrastructure
• Create an implementation plan and identify migration tools
• Identify local vs. cloud users
• Select required Office 365 services and purchase subscriptions
• Add and verify the domain of the Office 365 portal
• Change/Add DNS records
• Use IdFix to resolve local AD and AD FS errors identified by AD Connect and configure on-premises Active Directory and optionally AD FS
• Set up single sign-on (SSO) and Directory Sync
• Assign licenses and create Accounts/mailboxes in Office 365
• Export mailboxes to PSTs and move them from PSTs to Exchange Online mailboxes
• Register smartphones and tablets
• Move public folders
• Verify services ,li>Optimize system performance
• Patch and test firewalls and proxy servers
• Educate network support staff and users

Microsoft offers an assortment of useful tools to assist you to streamline most of the tasks required to build a hybrid network for Exchange Online. These utilities include the Office 365 Hybrid Configuration Wizard, PowerShell, the Exchange admin center (EAC), the Office 365 Deployment Readiness tool, and the IdFix Directory Synchronization tool. In practice, many phases of setting up a hybrid Office 365 deployment are prone to technical missteps. Progent's Microsoft-certified experts have dealt at length with issues associated with designing and rolling out hybrid Office 365 deployments and can show you how to you follow leading practices to avoid common issues, overcome them quickly, and protect your clients from service disruptions.

How Progent Can Help You to Integrate Office 365 with Your On-premises Environment
Progent can help you in every facet of moving to Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online and combining your local Exchange implementation with cloud-hosted Exchange. Progent can help you to define your operational objectives, evaluate the suitability of your existing infrastructure, design the topology for a hybrid environment, devise a deployment process, configure and verify a pilot system, install your hybrid system, centralize management functions, optimize performance, manage licenses, provide consulting for business continuity plans, assess regulatory compliance, and provide training for your IT team and clients. Progent can provide cost-effective online consulting services to help you to resolve stubborn technical issues, or Progent can provide end-to-end project management outsourcing services to ensure you finish your hybrid integration of Exchange Online on time and on budget.

In addition to Office 365, Microsoft offers other software packages that are part of the Office 365 product family. These include Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business Online, SharePoint Online, and Project Online. All of these packages can be deployed in cloud-based or hybrid implementations. Progent's Microsoft-certified O365 integration experts can help you to create hybrid networks that incorporate Office 365 products and local resources by delivering advanced services such as Windows Server consulting, Exchange integration, Microsoft Teams migration consulting, Skype for Business management and troubleshooting, SQL Server integration and application development, SharePoint planning and integration, Office 365 configuration and training, Microsoft Project expertise, and Dynamics GP maintenance.

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

Common samples of online and onsite consulting support provided by Progent to assist businesses to combine Office 365 Exchange Online with on-premises Exchange environments include:

• Tidy up email before exporting them into Office 365 Exchange Online
• Configure authentication with Office 365 and local Domain Users
• Configure Exchange Online and allocate licenses
• Rebuild profiles of Windows clients
• Move Google Gmail accounts
• Carry out manual mailbox exports when necessary
• Register email accounts to iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets
• Define and implement Office 365 Archiving
• Install on-premises or hybrid email filter appliances from third-party vendors
• Fix Exchange Online sync problems with AD Users and AD Global Security Groups
• Troubleshoot Outlook autodiscover problems
• Fix problems related to .PST and .OST files
• Define, configure, verify, and rectify mail flow
• Troubleshoot AD FS and AD Connect identity management issues
• Deploy PowerShell for management, repair, and migration
• Work with Microsoft support technicians to identify and resolve problems at Microsoft's end (e.g., a misconfigured Connector)
• Debug Office 365 Message Encryption problems
• Update on-premises Exchange Servers to current versions of Exchange and upgrade equipment
• Train Human Resources on steps to delete accounts for departed workers

Additional Cloud Integration Services from Progent
The choices offered for public cloud services are increasing rapidly, making it a serious challenge for IT managers to determine the best cloud solution for their business. Progent has worked extensively helping businesses ranging from startups to large enterprises to plan, deploy, and manage hybrid networks that combine multiple cloud products and services from leading public cloud providers. Progent's cloud integration experts can help you to evaluate the comparative advantages and shortcomings of different public cloud offerings and can help you build a cloud-centric or hybrid network that delivers maximum business value.

Public cloud products supported by Progent's consultants include:

Progent's Microsoft Azure cloud planning and integration experts can assist you with every stage of Microsoft Azure integration including needs analysis, prerequisites assessment, solution architecture, pilot testing, implementation, automated administration, performance tuning, license management, disaster recovery preparedness, security planning, and compliance assessment. Progent can help your IT staff to set up and troubleshoot firewalls and VPN tunnels so that your users can securely access to Azure services, and Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting experts can help you integrate key Microsoft platforms to work in the cloud including Windows Server, Exchange Server, SQL and SharePoint. Progent can also help your organization to create a hybrid environment that transparently combines on-premises datacenters with Azure-based resources.

Progent's certified Office and Office 365 experts can help companies of any size to integrate Microsoft Office desktop and Office 365 applications such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Access, Visio and OneNote into a seamless solution that provides quick return on investment and promotes better business outcomes. Progent can assist your company to interface Office or Office 365 apps with one another and with additional core Microsoft platforms including SharePoint, Exchange Server and SQL Server running on-premises or in the cloud. Progent's consultants can also assist you to fix compatibility issues between various versions of Microsoft Office and offers customized online Office and Office 365 training to individuals and groups.

Progent's Amazon AWS cloud integration consultants can provide affordable online consulting to help businesses of any size to access Amazon AWS cloud services such as Amazon EC2 for virtual server hosting, Amazon S3 for expandable low-latency storage, and Glacier for value-priced long-term archiving. Progent can assist you with every phase of Amazon AWS migration and troubleshooting including needs analysis, preparedness assessment, architectural design, testing, deployment, centralized administration, performance optimization, software license management, disaster recovery solutions, and security strategies. Progent offers advanced expertise with firewalls and VPN access and can help you deploy cloud-based or hybrid environments that seamlessly integrate Amazon AWS cloud services. Progent offers as-needed expertise or Progent can provide project management outsourcing or co-sourcing services to help you migrate smoothly to the Amazon AWS cloud.

Amazon Marketplace Web Service is a collection of APIs that allows Amazon sellers to streamline their business processes by automating key sales functions including listings, orders, shipments, inbound and outbound fulfillment, and finances. By tapping into Amazon's vast online selling environment and automating their sales processes, vendors can broaden their reach, reduce their operating costs, improve reaction time to customers, and increase their bottom line. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service developers can collaborate with your development staff and provide application programming, workflow integration, project management support, and training to help you shorten development time and costs and speed up your return on investment.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform (GCP) integration consultants offer affordable online and on-premises support to assist businesses to migrate any portion of their critical IT infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform services. This can save time and hardware costs and enable the use of Google's cutting edge machine learning tools. Progent can assist your IT team with every aspect of Google Cloud Platform integration including needs analysis, preparedness assessment, system design, pilot testing, configuration, centralized administration, performance tuning, licensing management, disaster recovery mechanisms, and security and compliance.