Posted by Andrew Miller
All of the hottest technology seems to be bursting forth in the consumer sphere. VR, AR, IoT, wearables, autonomous driving—the sci-fi world that the ’50s and ’60s promised us is finally here (sans hydrogen-powered flying cars, unfortunately). Meanwhile, enterprise print management is still just plodding along with yesterday’s tech. Right?
Actually, there’s a quiet revolution taking place among enterprise printing solutions. No, it’s not quite as futuristic as talking to your watch, but it’s important for a number of reasons: less hassle, increased productivity, greater security and reduced costs, to name just a few. Print servers and all their attendant costs and headaches are becoming a thing of the past. A new kind of infrastructure is taking their place—and with a fraction of their physical footprint. Few companies understand that better than PrinterLogic, which has helped spark that quiet revolution in enterprise printing solutions.
Let’s take a look at some of these cutting-edge enterprise print management trends.
1. Secure printing: Printing is an analogue technology in a digital world. It remains susceptible to the same potential breaches of privacy that have existed ever since, well, the first words were written. Centuries later, security is as important as ever, which is why an increasing number of organizations are looking to their enterprise print management software to safeguard documents from falling into the wrong hands.
PrinterLogic’s Secure Printing functionality integrates with your existing printers and allows end users to initiate a print job and then wait until they are physically present at the printer to execute, or release, it. They can do this by swiping a badge or card, logging into the LCD panel on the printer itself, or by using any device with a browser to access PrinterLogic’s web-based app. By virtue of its convenience, it ensures that end users are more likely to make use of Secure Printing.
2. BYOD, guest and mobile printing: To most observers, enterprise print management hasn’t kept pace with the advent of mobile computing. We beg to differ. While it’s true that some enterprise printing solutions provide half-baked functionality that allows some mobile devices to print (usually by installing extra apps for a particular platform), PrinterLogic’s Mobile Printing feature enables any mobile device to print to any authorized printer. No dedicated drivers. No proprietary apps. No special printers.
For in-house mobile users, all they have to do is tap the “Share” button on their device, select the PrinterLogic printer, and then print their document. This same platform allows to BYOD and guest users to print to authorized printers using proven email-to-print technology—making printing on- or off-network as easy as sending an email.
3. Cloud printing: The cloud has become the default location for many of our documents, our collaborative editing software, and even our operating systems. With more organizations seeking to minimize their infrastructure footprint and gain the competitive advantage of web-based “anywhere” computing, it makes sense that enterprise print management software would follow suit. But cloud-based enterprise printing solutions have some serious caveats, including their reliance on a WAN connection that could be interrupted at any time.
PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud) neatly avoids that issue by leveraging the same direct IP printing model that has made our on-premise enterprise print management software such a sought-after way to eliminate print servers. Instead of using the WAN for each print job, PrinterLogic SaaS uses the WAN to establish direct client-to-printer connections that don’t require WAN access beyond the initial handshake. If the WAN goes down, users can continue printing as usual with no loss of functionality—just as with our standard enterprise printing solution. Plus it benefits from the same incredible ease of management.
It’s okay to look at consumer tech with a little envy. But, as I’ve outlined above, there are some exciting trends in enterprise print management taking place as we speak, and PrinterLogic is at the forefront of all of them.