Posted by Jordan Pusey

Have you been dragging your feet on adopting cloud printing? Or maybe you have a basic form of enterprise cloud printing in place but you’d really like to up your game?

Supporting the world’s most popular mobile operating system with full-featured Android cloud print functionality isn’t as daunting as it might sound. At PrinterLogic, we’ve earned a reputation for getting to grips with complex, enterprise-level printing challenges and making next-gen features like cloud printing accessible and cost-effective for even the most intricate print environments.

With PrinterLogic, you have two choices when it comes to implementing cloud print for Android phones and tablets: Mobile Printing and PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud).

Mobile Printing for Cloud-Style Printing
Our on-premises Mobile Printing solution introduces many of the same features that you would expect from a dedicated cloud printing solution. PrinterLogic’s Mobile Printing doesn’t require you to install any client-side software, supports Android as well as any other mobile operating system, and also works with any printer—even legacy models. To print with an authorized mobile device, all a user has to do is tap the “Share” icon, then tap print, and finally select a PrinterLogic printer.

BYOD users have it just as easy. Instead of tapping the “Share” icon, they simply send their documents to a printer using proven and straightforward email-to-print functionality. Admins can set up specific printers with dedicated email addresses for this purpose, and they can place a whole host of restrictions on printing to prevent abuse—such as specifying which printer functions can be accessed (e.g., color, duplexing), and setting print quotas. Because email-to-print leverages your preferred mail service provider, you can even set up mail flow rules to limit the types of files that can be printed.

Mobile Printing’s BYOD and guest support mirrors true cloud printing in that mobile users have the ability to print to local printers even if they happen to be off-network at the time. And by making cloud printing as easy as emailing, users of any skill level can take advantage of cloud print for their Android phones without having to call the service desk for help.

PrinterLogic SaaS for True Cloud Printing
For an enterprise cloud printing solution that’s completely cloud-based, there’s PrinterLogic SaaS. Whereas our on-premises solution has a minimal footprint (as a matter of fact, it can radically shrink your print infrastructure by eliminating your print servers), PrinterLogic SaaS is a zero-footprint cloud solution. It delivers all of the same benefits, including centralized management that is both easier to use and more powerful than traditional print management solutions, seamless integration with your existing print environment (even virtual and remote environments like Citrix or VMware), comprehensive print auditing for macro- and micro-level oversight, and the elimination of scripting and GPOs while increasing the precision and flexibility of deployments across your entire organization. Naturally, it also provides effortless, built-in Android cloud print functionality.

One of the common drawbacks of cloud printing solutions is that printing can be impacted when the WAN connection is interrupted in any way. Not with PrinterLogic SaaS. In addition to cloud print for Android phones and other mobile devices, PrinterLogic SaaS provides reliable, high-availability direct IP printing for all your standard clients. Direct IP printing creates one-to-one connections between clients and printers, so even if the WAN connection is temporarily broken, end users can continue printing as usual.

The great thing is that neither PrinterLogic SaaS nor Mobile Printing is a one-trick pony that is only capable of providing Android cloud print functionality. Each is a full-featured solution that brings enterprise cloud printing to every mobile device in your organization, regardless of OS, and each is incredibly easy to manage as well as incredibly easy to use.

Posted by Jordan Pusey

True story. A friend of mine always used to keep the gate to his backyard secured with a heavy-duty padlock. Every time he wanted to mow the lawn, he had to run and get the key to unlock it. Every time his daughters wanted to ride their bikes on the sidewalk out front, he had to run and get the key to unlock it. Every time his wife wanted to carry something around the side of the house, he had to run and get the key to unlock it.

Eventually, he got tired of all the to-ing and fro-ing. He got complacent. He stopped securing the padlock.

Then he came out one morning to find the backyard gate wide open and a trail of fresh footsteps in the grass leading right to the garage—the place where he’d once kept all his expensive power tools and his family’s high-end bikes.

This troubling sequence of events doesn’t just play out at home. In the enterprise, we see the same kind of behavior toward secure printing. Admins lock down the environment at first, making sure that everything is tightly controlled. But then, as the days pass uneventfully and end users grumble about the slightest inconvenience, the restrictions get loosened. Authorization becomes more lax. Users get added in ways that are expedient rather than secure. Unclaimed print jobs are allowed to sit in the output tray for days on end. Complacency replaces vigilance. And then comes the shock and panic when that complacency is exploited.

At PrinterLogic, we understand how that happens because we know that secure printing solutions are only as strong as end users’ willingness to actually use them. To put it another way, if they have to run and get the padlock key every time they want to use secure printing, eventually they’re going to stop securing the padlock. That’s just as bad as having no secure printing solution at all.

That’s why we developed our secure pull printing solution to be as convenient and as easy to use as possible. With our Pull Printing module, your organization has the choice of three different ways to implement secure pull printing, and your end users never face more than two simple steps: Clicking “Print” as usual, followed by securely releasing the job from the queue once they’re at the printer. This intentional second step is what’s called “pull” (or “release”) printing.

PrinterLogic’s secure printing release methods are:

• Badge or card reader: After initiating the print job, the end user can walk over to the printer and swipe an ID badge or magnetic card to immediately release the print job associated with that badge/card. A large number of printers already have these readers built in, but there are a wide variety of external dongles that will integrate with the printer (usually via USB) to provide this secure printing functionality.
• Embedded control panel: In this scenario, admins can simply install the PrinterLogic app on any one of the many supported printer models. Users can then log in via the printer’s embedded control panel and release their print jobs. The advantage of this secure pull printing method is that it requires no additional hardware.
• Browser-based: PrinterLogic is unique among secure printing solutions in that it allows any device with a browser (e.g., PC, Mac, Chromebook, mobile device) to access its web-based portal and release authorized print jobs. The major advantage of this method is that the release device can be set in kiosk mode next to a dedicated printer, or it can be the user’s own personal device. That makes it especially convenient for users who travel from location to location within the organization.

In addition to being quick and easy to implement, PrinterLogic’s secure Pull Printing functionality integrates seamlessly with any print environment and can be adapted to suit even the most complex use cases. Above all, and unlike more cumbersome and less effective secure printing solutions, PrinterLogic’s incredible simplicity and flexibility helps prevent the slow settle into complacency when it comes to enterprise print security.

Printing with USB-connected printers is convenient and certainly simplifies troubleshooting, but once your organization expands beyond more than a handful of employees, it makes more sense to migrate to shared network printers. To handle that kind of print infrastructure, most organizations choose to implement SMB- or enterprise-scale print server solutions.

The trouble is that print servers aren’t really ideal either. They cost money to purchase (both software licensing and hardware), operate, maintain and eventually upgrade, and they require almost constant oversight the entire time they’re deployed. Between things like spooler crashes, difficult printer deployments, single points of failure and driver incompatibilities, print server management can eat up more than its fair share of IT resources. It’s not uncommon for organizations to have one or two (or even more) IT personnel dedicated to managing the print server solutions that were supposed to make the print environment more scalable.

The perfect solution would be to print without a server, which would eliminate the need for print server management, network print server software, and all the resources that go into supporting them on a daily basis. But just short of the impossible scenario of connecting a USB printer to every single client, what choice do you have?

PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management solution enables you to print without the hassle and headache that plague print server solutions. Instead, we offer two different but equally intuitive and powerful ways to roll out reliable, flexible and low-footprint enterprise printing across your organization:

• Our on-premises solution, which provides centralized management from a single pane of glass, effortless printer and driver deployments without relying on group policy objects (GPOs) or scripts, and user-empowering features like self-service printer installation—all without the need for a single print server.
• Our new cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, PrinterCloud, which provides all the above features without the need for any local server hardware whatsoever.

Whereas some enterprise printing solutions are just network print server software masquerading as a standalone product, PrinterLogic’s solutions really are complete and full-service. They can either enhance your existing print server solutions or they can replace them altogether, even in challenging virtual environments like Citrix and VMware. Through PrinterLogic’s easy-to-use management console, you can manage drivers effortlessly, deploy printers to end users dynamically, conveniently monitor print behavior and print usage across the organization, and expand the capabilities of your entire print environment seamlessly through options like Mobile Printing and Pull Printing.

PrinterLogic is able to deliver these features alongside high availability and rock-solid stability because it leverages direct IP printing, which establishes one-to-one connections between clients and printers. This means that end users can keep printing as usual even during a WAN outage, and print job data traffic doesn’t bog down the network as it reduces, or even eliminates back-and-forth trips across the WAN. And while conventional direct IP print management can be as challenging as print server management, PrinterLogic’s approach to printer administration is unparalleled in its ease and power. To give just one example, you can enable one-time or permanent default printer settings by simply ticking a checkbox.

At one time, the idea of printing without a server might have seemed beyond the reach of the enterprise. But with PrinterLogic able to replace even the most complex and deeply embedded print server solutions with its own lean, feature-rich and cost-effective print management solution, there’s no need for any organization to struggle with print servers anymore.

What’s best practice when dealing with print servers? Ask any IT expert and they’d probably end up saying the same thing: redundancy.

Redundancy is key to increasing print availability because, let’s face it, print servers aren’t always the most reliable devices in our IT environment—yet they’re utterly vital to our workflow and productivity across the organization. That redundancy can take a couple of forms, the most common of which is failover clusters. In traditional print environments you can achieve print server redundancy without clustering, of course, but that typically involves more scrambling and downtime when print servers inevitably fail.

At the same time, redundancy doesn’t come cheap. Even if you create a Server 2008R2 print cluster, you’ll need to pay for hardware, licensing, power, maintenance, upgrades and oversight when it comes to those additional print servers. And that’s in addition to all those categories of costs for your primary print servers. In a single month those redundancy costs might not break the bank, but over time and expanded to the entire organization, especially when several decentralized print servers are in place, they can really start to add up.

Nor is redundancy easy or foolproof. If your primary print server is unreliable enough to require a failover, what does that say about the secondary print server that you’re using as your failsafe? Furthermore, redundancy can be difficult to set up and ensure in virtual environments, as the many failover clustering problems in VMware go to show. All of that clustering takes time to establish and maintain, which in turn leads to additional costs—and in the end, there’s still no guarantee that your end users will be able to continue printing without interruption should your print servers get knocked offline.

So how can you achieve print server redundancy without clustering, without the failover clustering problems in VMware and other virtual environments, and without the risk of your failsafe, well, failing? Simple. Eliminate print servers altogether with PrinterLogic.

PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management solution replaces print servers outright while introducing greater print availability, increased ease of management, and additional functionality to your print environment. Unlike Server 2008R2 print clusters, both our single-server on-premises solution and our all-new SaaS solution, PrinterCloud, leverage the proven strength of direct IP printing, which establishes one-to-one connections between clients and printers. This means that, even in the rare event of a server failure, end users can continue printing as usual until the server is back online.

The risk of that happening, though, is greatly reduced because PrinterLogic is incredibly robust toward the problems that can bring print servers to their knees—things like driver mismatches and printer installation conflicts. Not only does PrinterLogic’s centralized management allow admins to administer drivers and printers effortlessly across the entire organization, its finely targeted deployments (without the need for GPOs and scripts) and controlled but easy-to-use self-service installation portal go a long way toward preventing the underlying causes of print spooler crashes and other fatal flaws of print servers.

And PrinterLogic integrates seamlessly with virtual environments, making non-issues of failover clustering problems in VMware, Citrix and other virtual printing scenarios. In addition, PrinterLogic admins enjoy smoother and simpler printer deployments alongside advanced features such as location-based printing.

With PrinterLogic, you can eliminate the need for redundant print servers by eliminating print servers completely—along with all their costs and headache. It’s a single solution for multiple longstanding print management woes.

Posted by Andrew Miller

There’s an underutilized resource in your organization. It’s abundant, available on demand, and extremely cost-effective.

It’s your end users.

Whereas traditional print management solutions like print servers have tended to treat end users like an obstacle, next-generation solutions like PrinterLogic are changing that mindset by enabling self-service printer installation.

PrinterLogic’s Self-service portal empowers your end users to perform routine tasks, such as printer installation, entirely by themselves. That might sound risky, but it actually saves time and money by leveraging the underutilized strength of your user base.

However, it has to be done right. You can’t just turn a conventional printing environment into a free-for-all and hope that you don’t run into issues.

That’s where PrinterLogic’s enterprise print management solution comes in. Our acclaimed self-service printer installation portal enables end users to identify and install nearby authorized printers—along with any corresponding drivers—with a single click. All they have to do is visit a dedicated internal page using their web browser and click on the desired printer. To make it even easier, PrinterLogic’s self-service printer installation portal also allows you to upload floorplan maps that show local printers in relation to the physical layout of the workplace. That way, even new employees or roaming users can get a quick fix on which printers are close by.

That last point actually highlights one of the additional benefits of enabling self-service printer installations. Greater autonomy means greater flexibility. So when users visit different offices or move to new locations, they already have the confidence and the ability to install printers themselves without having to struggle with convoluted printer mapping processes or phone calls to the service desk. By avoiding the usual hiccups, they can transition across the organization quickly and smoothly, even in highly distributed environments

PrinterLogic’s centralized management console also makes it easy for admins to set up printer assignments. You have the ability to view and manage printers anywhere in the organization from a single pane of glass, and the intuitive interface makes print management effortless—no matter whether you’re changing settings for individual printers or the entire fleet. Seamless integration with Active Directory (AD) gives you fine-grained control over which users are able to access which printers.

All this puts a lot of power over printing back into the hands of end users—safely and securely. And, as you can imagine, self-service printer installations remove a huge burden from the shoulders of your IT support staff because they no longer have to deal with installation-related calls to the service desk. One federal government agency was able to reduce print-related service desk calls by 70% (TVID: 9B7-248-E75) after implementing PrinterLogic, while a Fortune 500 company achieved a stunning 90% drop in those calls (TVID: 4AF-AC8-2C9). That equates to significant cost savings and ROI.

There’s a lot to be gained from empowering your end users with the ability to install printers on their own, and the way to do that is by using PrinterLogic’s self-service printer installation portal. But not all print management solutions can promise the simplicity and reliability of PrinterLogic. And though our customers’ experiences speak for themselves, we encourage you to trial for PrinterLogic in your organization and see how self-service printer installations—along with a host of other great features—can transform print management. Demo our on-premises solution or our all-new, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution free for 30 days.