Cloud computing has almost everyone rethinking how they approach technology. CTOs, sysadmins and other IT professionals are increasingly aware of what their organizations stand to gain from reducing their physical infrastructure, centralizing management and streamlining how IT services are delivered to their end users. That in turn has prompted many of them to take a fresh look at virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions like Citrix and VMware.
With VDI solutions comes the perceived challenge of VDI printing. Implementing an enterprise-scale VDI solution and migrating an entire organization to a virtual platform can seem daunting enough. When you combine that with lingering concerns over how exactly VMware or Citrix printing will work, even in very basic print environments, the uncertainty can cause organizations to wonder whether virtualization is truly right for them. That doubt could be what prevents them from enjoying the very real benefits of going virtual.
So how can you be sure that your organization is prepared for VDI printing?
First, let’s take a moment to recap virtual printing and why it can be so tricky.
Virtual desktops provide end users with a consistent, centrally managed computing experience. This makes VDI ideal for organizations of all kinds, but it’s a model that is especially well suited to organizations that are geographically distributed or that have inherently dynamic workplaces. The session-based (as opposed to workstation-based) nature of this computing paradigm allows for greater flexibility while consolidating and simplifying administrative control over multi-location environments.
Printing, on the other hand, is still very much rooted in the workstation-centric computing model. It tends to work best with direct connections that rarely see any change. Standard VDI print solutions try their best to overcome this reliability gap. Unfortunately, there are so many variables to account for when trying to get a virtual desktop to print to a local printer that it’s never quite as straightforward as it should be.
As a result, admins often end up struggling to choose the right option from the available print-management solutions—only to find that they all have an Achilles heel.
How PrinterLogic enhances VDI printing
Unlike the vast majority of VDI print solutions and conventional print-management solutions, PrinterLogic doesn’t try to replace the native printing capabilities of your Citrix or VMware environment. Trying to commandeer VDI printing is how compatibility issues arise, and furthermore, it only ends up creating an extra component for admins to manage alongside the virtual solution.
Instead, PrinterLogic acts as a complement to native VDI printing. This enables it to integrate fully and seamlessly with your virtual environment while preserving the native VMware and Citrix printing functionality and enhancing the ease of management.
What does that look like in a real-world scenario? Well, let’s take Citrix printing as an example. If your organization prefers to use Citrix auto-created printers, that’s perfectly fine. Using PrinterLogic’s intuitive centralized management console, you can leverage our solution’s unique direct-IP printing capabilities to provision local printers to select endpoint devices. These devices will then print via the Citrix Universal Print Driver. Along with its streamlined administration, this method allows for compressed print jobs (easier on the WAN), driverless printing (for increased compatibility) and even support for home-based printers.
What many IT professionals are surprised to learn is that PrinterLogic achieves all this without the need for group policy or scripts. Yes, that’s right: PrinterLogic eliminates GPOs and scripts. The advanced deployment features of our next-generation serverless printing software fully leverage Active Directory criteria to deliver printers to specific users or entire groups—but, crucially, minus the usual administrative overhead. This eclipses the outdated, error-prone deployment mechanisms of legacy print-management solutions and helps solve the longstanding reliability and management challenges associated with VDI printing.
And PrinterLogic brings similar advantages to VMware printing as well.
Experience the ease of VDI printing with PrinterLogic
If you’d like to learn even more about how to prepare for VDI printing with PrinterLogic, have a look at this blog post on how our solution streamlines Citrix printing in the enterprise. Or check out this post on how to perfect your VDI printing with PrinterLogic. In those posts, you’ll begin to understand how customers like Pioneer Technology (read the case study here) have seen VDI printing and print-management issues all but vanish after implementing PrinterLogic’s Cloud Solution. For Pioneer, print-related support tickets dropped from an estimated 750 per month to around five.
Better yet, you can test PrinterLogic as a proof of concept in your current or prospective VDI environment. To do so, simply sign up today and you can download and test our serverless software solution completely free of charge for 30 days.