Eliminate Printer Server Sprawl

Posted by Jordan Pusey

No organization sets out with the goal of creating print server sprawl. It’s something that happens gradually.

Take the National Widget Company. They started off with a single print server. That’s it—just one. Then they bought out a competitor, merged with a former partner and purchased new facilities to accommodate their expanding workforce. With each new development, they acquired more infrastructure and more end users, which they supported by deploying additional print servers. Now, given all the time they spend managing print servers, it seems like they’re in the print management business rather than the widget business.

Sound familiar?

That’s a pretty common tale for distributed organizations. Unless they’re already firmly wedded to a centralized print server model, they tend to deploy additional print servers for the sake of ease and expedience. But that can quickly lead to diminishing returns, because each new piece of infrastructure involves costs associated with print server management. There’s the cost of purchase, maintenance, licensing and upgrade on the hardware side, and the cost of licensing, deployment, administration and migration on the software side. Print server sprawl certainly isn’t cheap.

Nor is it convenient. With each new print server comes the same old frustrations: a lack of visibility into the print environment, poor driver management, fragile print spoolers, limited self-installation options, frustrated end users making calls to the helpdesk, downtime.

Once organizations grow tired of all that headache, the centralized print server model starts to look pretty appealing. Yet that model that has many, many drawbacks of its own, including complete reliance on the WAN. And that highlights the fact that a centralized print server is one big single point of failure that requires expensive redundancy measures.

So how can you eliminate print server sprawl and the ongoing hassle of managing print servers without simply trading it all in for a solution that’s just as flawed?

PrinterLogic is a unique print management solution that fuses the proven reliability of direct IP printing with the unprecedented ease of centralized management. It stops print server sprawl immediately because it enables your organization to eliminate print servers completely, regardless of your wider environment. Citrix? VMware? RDP? Globally distributed? Highly mobile/BYOD? Healthcare with strict EMR/EHR requirements? PrinterLogic not only supports those diverse environments, it integrates seamlessly with each of them to either replace or enhance your existing enterprise printing solution.

According to one survey of 333 verified PrinterLogic customers (TVID: 77B-13B-830), the independent research firm TechValidate found that nearly 80% of those customers were able to reduce their remote infrastructure by 30% or more through our print management solution. Another survey of close to 400 verified PrinterLogic customers (TVID: 539-304-868) determined that 83% of them had reduced time spent on print management by 30% or more as a result of implementing our solution—and reduced infrastructure played no small part in that. Instead of concentrating on managing print servers and print-related damage control, they were focusing on their core business and enjoying impressive ROI.

Among many other features, such as our user-friendly self-service installation portal and the ability to deploy printers without resorting to scripts and GPOs, PrinterLogic’s centralized management console stands out on account of its ease of use. Unlike the continued pains of print server management, the console allows you to make individual or bulk changes to printers, profiles and drivers in real time with just a few intuitive clicks.

And with PrinterLogic’s implementation options, there’s just no longer any excuse for print server sprawl. You can go with our on-premises solution or opt for our next-generation cloud-based solution, PrinterCloud, which brings many of the same practical advantages plus the flexibility of a zero-footprint, software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

Whichever you choose, your days of managing print servers and fighting their sprawl are over.

Network Printing Problems: WAN Bottlenecks

Posted by Devin Anderson

Without network printing, chances are that we’d all have hardwired personal printers. From an end user’s point of view, that would probably be ideal. Printer and driver installation would be more straightforward. And they wouldn’t suffer nearly as many issues with reliability, speed and other network printing problems.

From a print management standpoint, however, personal printers would be a nightmare, especially in enterprise-scale organizations. The size of the printer fleet would balloon exponentially, and every management procedure would need to be carried out manually and individually. Which is why, for reasons of both time and cost, network printing still makes a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, network printing is often hamstrung by the WAN. In distributed environments that employ a centralized print server model, users at remote sites are dependent on local print jobs traveling across the WAN to the server and back again. Their preferred network printer can be slow to respond as a result, which can be utterly baffling when the network mechanics aren’t clear: Why is it taking so long for their job to execute on a printer that might only be a few feet away?

In virtual environments, users often encounter the same frustrations. They’ll initiate a print job from their client machine, but increased WAN usage—particularly with virtual solutions, which rely heavily on WAN connectivity—can create serious and prolonged bottlenecks that slow network printing. If the issue persists, those same users are likely to call the service desk and complain when their network printer is slow to respond, resulting in increased call volumes and overburdened support staff.

How can your organization avoid WAN bottlenecks while retaining (or even improving) your current level of print management? Better still, how can you combine the advantages of network printing with the convenience and reliability of personal printers?

PrinterLogic has developed a proven and cost-effective solution that meets all those demands. Our next-generation enterprise print management software leverages direct IP printing to establish one-to-one connections between clients and local printers—even in complex distributed and virtual environments like Citrix and VMware. When a user clicks “Print,” the behavior is exactly as they would expect: The job travels straight from their machine to the desired printer.

This actually serves two purposes:

  1. PrinterLogic reduces reliance on the WAN for network printing. That direct path gives print jobs a boost in speed as well as reliability because it removes the factors that cause slow network printing and other print-related issues when the WAN connection is interrupted.
  2. PrinterLogic frees up WAN bandwidth for other applications. Network printing can be a data-intensive activity. With print jobs no longer traveling across the WAN, it makes that vital and finite bandwidth available to other important data traffic.

With PrinterLogic, there’s also no need for WAN accelerators and other tools to ensure smooth network printing. Our software solution solves these WAN bottlenecks independently. In fact, it even has the ability to reduce print infrastructure massively by eliminating print servers throughout your entire organization.

At the same time, PrinterLogic brings greater ease to print management through its centralized administration console. You can add, change or remove printers as well as drivers anywhere in the organization from a single pane of glass. Its intuitive interface and powerful management features makes it possible for you to set up dynamic deployments without the need for scripts or GPOs or initiate mass system-wide changes like adjusting default printer settings simply by checking a box.

In about the time that your end users spend waiting each year for a network printer that’s slow to respond (TVID: 42F-3D4-7A3), you could implement PrinterLogic across your organization, eliminating WAN bottlenecks, slow network printing and downtime along with expensive, hard-to-maintain print infrastructure. Why wait any longer?

Is It Time to Switch to an Enterprise Cloud Printing Solution?

Posted by Devin Anderson

Even with all the hype over cloud computing, there’s still some wariness toward cloud-based solutions in the enterprise. Though many organizations were quick to migrate to cloud storage and backup solutions on account of their obvious benefits, fewer organizations have been as keen to follow their pioneering peers into adopting cloud-based software and communications suites. And there’s a lingering sense that core solutions like enterprise cloud printing still need some time to mature before they’re ready for adoption in a fast-paced production environment.

At PrinterLogic, we totally understand the basis for that apprehension. We’ve seen competing cloud printing solutions in action and studied their many drawbacks. We’ve talked to enterprise-level organizations about what they feel is missing from the enterprise cloud printing landscape and what they’d like to see in a software cloud print service. We’ve heard our own customers lavish praise our on-premises print management solution and wondered if it was possible to replicate that best-in-class experience in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud printing solution.

In response, we developed PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud), which we think will not only change your mind about enterprise cloud printing but make an airtight argument about why it’s high time for your organization to switch.

First, some background. As we looked at other cloud printing paradigms, we always came back to their Achilles heel—WAN reliance. Unlike, say, cloud storage, which allows you save a local copy of a file that will sync with the cloud server once WAN access is restored, you don’t have that luxury with enterprise cloud printing. It has to be an instant, always-on service. If the WAN connection is interrupted, print availability and productivity suffer as a result.

But what if you could have all the benefits of cloud printing—things like zero local footprint, a cost-effective SaaS model, secure centralized administration from anywhere, plus incredible flexibility—without the WAN vulnerability? What if you didn’t have to compromise on powerful administrative control for the convenience of the cloud? What if it were a software cloud print service that could be implemented quickly and reliably, even in complex virtual environments like Citrix and VMware?

That’s PrinterLogic SaaS.

PrinterLogic SaaS is built on the same software platform as our next-generation on-premises print management solution, which combines the proven reliability of direct IP printing with the ease and power of centralized management. It’s a single, highly scalable software solution that delivers unprecedented print availability, seamless integration with any environment, incredible ease of use for admins and end users alike, and a streamlined approach to print management that saves time and ultimately costs.

And, like its on-premises counterpart, PrinterLogic SaaS is robust enough to eliminate the need for print servers entirely, enabling your organization to replace the expensive tangle of traditional print management hardware with one software cloud print service.

While all that amounts to a compelling reason to switch to our cloud printing solution, we don’t do anything by halves. That’s why PrinterLogic SaaS also offers Mobile Printing functionality to deliver cutting-edge mobile printing capabilities to all of your organization’s mobile users, including BYOD users and guests, with no need for special client-side software. In addition, PrinterLogic SaaS offers Pull Printing for enhanced security protocols that are intuitive enough for end users to incorporate into their workflow instead of finding ways to work around them.

So is it time to switch to enterprise cloud printing? With PrinterLogic SaaS, it just got a lot harder to justify sticking with the status quo. No traditional on-premises print management solution comes close to providing the same cost-effectiveness, features and reliability. Give it a try free for 30 days and see.

Print Tracking Software for Enterprises

Posted by Jordan Pusey

Most organizations are all too aware of the role that information plays in making decisions with enterprise-wide impact. The more information that’s available, the better those decisions tend to be. And when it comes to gathering information on their print environments, those same organizations often look to print tracking software to address the deficiencies in traditional print management solutions like direct IP printing or print servers, which offer little to nothing in the way of monitoring, reporting and auditing.

As a first step in their effort to track print jobs, that’s certainly commendable. But print environments are complex beasts, and print tracking can be equally complex. Assuming, for starters, that your print tracking solution integrates fully and seamlessly with your existing print management software and your wider IT environment, the biggest challenge lies in both the amount and the quality of the data that’s captured.

Because it’s not enough just to gather what amounts to a print queue history. When you track print jobs, you need to know the fine print: Who initiated the job and when? Which workstation was used? Where did it print? Was the job in color or black and white? That’s the granular type of detail that helps you parse things down to the user level.

In an enterprise-scale organization, however, aggregating that much detail can have a serious downside. Before you know it, you’re drowning in information. That’s why the final hurdle in any print tracking initiative lies in organizing the data in a way that’s useful and makes sense even to non-experts. Being able to easily arrange and analyze that data gives you a 20,000-foot view of your print environment, including longitudinal printing trends as well as consolidation and cost-saving opportunities.

PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management software has print tracking as one of its core features, which means that the ability to track print jobs on both the macro and micro levels (and everything in between) is deeply integrated into our solution. Whereas other print tracking solutions tend to sit atop your existing print management software, which risks compatibility issues, PrinterLogic gathers vital print job information at the source—including USB-connected printers.

As a result, with PrinterLogic you have seamless integration along with easy, at-a-glance access to an incredible amount of comprehensive print tracking data. But, as I mentioned, that’s only part of the equation. The key is to make that data work for you.

That’s where our print management software truly stands out. PrinterLogic’s reporting and auditing features give you the tools you need to extract relevant insights from your print tracking data. For example, you can use PrinterLogic to determine:

  • Which printers see the heaviest usage. Underutilized printers can be consolidated or rotated into different placement to maximize the life of your hardware fleet.
  • How much print jobs are costing you. By tying the real-world cost of printing to current usage, you can identify significant cost-saving opportunities.
  • Who initiated certain print jobs. Did someone print out a document labeled “classified”? At what time and on what machine?

PrinterLogic also lets you organize and publish that data as you see fit. You can arrange print jobs by user, machine or group, for instance, and then have reports automatically emailed to the relevant decision makers. If a user is regularly printing large color jobs outside of business hours, or a manager wants to know how much his or her department is spending on printing, you can easily pinpoint that information and act on it with the print tracking functionality in PrinterLogic’s leading print management software.

Print Auditing

IT departments are experts at tracking and auditing everything. IT departments audit failed logins, successful logins, access to files, file transfers, IP packets, DNS queries, open ports, closed ports, physical assets, software assets, up times, downtime, the list goes on and on. In fact, if you even take a look back 10 years ago, the Forbes top 2000 companies spent nearly $350 million annually on just log management software. But with all that money spent on tracing, tracking, and auditing software, nearly 90% of all companies are not tracking one of their biggest expenses—printing! Spending on printing accounts for between 5-15% of a company’s revenue. That is a hard statistic to believe, and it gets worst! 90% of all organizations are not tracking their printing in any way. Why is that? The answer is not very complicated.

Before we can get into the specifics as to why companies are not tracking their printing, we need to first look at the different type of print architectures that are supported. Traditionally, print jobs are either rendered and spooled locally on the workstation, or they are spooled and rendered on a print server. No matter which architecture is supported, tracking and auditing become very cumbersome if possible at all. Let’s look at each of these architectures and how print auditing and tracking can be handled. Print server technology has been around for decades, yet print servers don’t natively offer any type of print job tracking. “Why Microsoft, why?!” It is possible to turn on print logging via Windows Event Viewer. However, this type of logging is not very functional or insightful. All you get is a record that a print job was sent through the server’s spooler and what printer it went to. Knowing who sent the print job, how big it was, was it color or black and white, are all details that are lost in the Windows Event Viewer. This doesn’t really help an organization understand the costs of printing and it doesn’t give any insightful information that can be used to make informed decisions about printing. Imagine using Windows Event viewer to answer the CTO when he asks, “How is it that we are spending 5-15% on printing each year?”

For environments that print directly to their printers and not through a print server, this becomes even harder information to gather. You would have to rely on gathering and digging through the event viewers in each and every workstation in the environment to get the same information.

There are a few bolt-on products that try to show how much printing is really going on, but these solutions have their own struggles as well. A lot of time these products are developed by the print manufacture and are “vendor” specific. Meaning they only grab the metrics for that specific brand of printers, or even worst they may only report on specific models from that vendor. This could leave an organization locked to a specific vendor, making them feel as though they must trade off gaining insight to printing for the loss of being competitive when bidding for a new fleet of printers. The second struggle with these solutions is that the data they gather isn’t insightful. They may account for how many print jobs were sent to a printer, but to really understand the cost of printing you need more than just print volumes. You need to know who is printing what, where the printing is going, which departments are printing more than others, how much each print jobs cost, how much it costs to support a specific printer or model, how much printing is directed to locally attach and/or USB printer, and did anyone print HR documents to non-HR printers?

But all is not lost! You can actually get all this information today, and more, no matter the type of print environment you support. If you want to answer the question, “Where are we spending that 5-15% of our revenue?” you can. PrinterLogic’s print job auditing and reporting tracks who printed what, where it was printed to, how much of it was color, and how much was black and white. In addition, you can gain useful insights into printing trends by the user, department, location, and even automatic cost analysis. Sounds too good to be true…well what if I told you it also requires no additional setup! All of these insights are gained automatically right out of the box. You do not need to predefine groups, users, or printers within the reporting software, nor do you need to ask your users to type in department codes or user codes. Rather PrinterLogic will sync automatically with your Active Directory and generate these insights for you right out of the box.

Not only can you answer the question of where your 5–15% of revenue is going, you can qualify if the print initiatives that you are rolling out are reducing costs. PrinterLogic can generate weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually scheduled reports that quantify how much money you saved by defaulting your users to black and white, or by switching out those old printers with a new fleet of MFPs. Or you can get after Mrs. Jones for printing 1000 copies of her Sunday flyer.

Easy Fix to Network Printer Mapping Problems

If it weren’t for network printer mapping, print management would probably be a whole lot easier. There wouldn’t be the need to mess with the intricacies of group policy objects (GPOs) and roll your own custom network printer mapping script. There wouldn’t be users calling the support desk to say that they need a printer installed or that they accidentally mapped the wrong one themselves. There would be fewer printing errors (and support tickets) when network printers fail to map automatically.

That’s a pipe dream, of course. Wherever you have network printers, you’re going to have to map them to clients.

But imagine what life would be like if you could just simplify network printer mapping and make it more reliable. If you could deliver printers to users without GPOs and network printer mapping scripts. If you could plug into Active Directory (AD) to automate and target your deployment of network printers to specific users based on group, organizational unit (OU), container or even subnet and IP address. And if you could empower your end users to map printers themselves with a simple-to-use self-service installation portal.

You can. With PrinterLogic.

Network printing and mapping printers with traditional methods
Typically, admins have two options with automatic network printer mapping. They can either use GPOs, which impose a rigid hierarchy on deployments and are susceptible to rights management conflicts that are hard to troubleshoot. Or they can use a network printer mapping script, which is a custom-coded way of delivering printers to specific users.

Scripts can be a bit more finely tuned than GPOs, but they prolong logon times and can even cause serious logon issues. They also need to be updated and redeployed when a particular variable, such as a local printer, changes. In short, neither is ideal for automated deployments that are precise, reliable and efficient.

Network printing and mapping printers with PrinterLogic
The ideal method for mapping network printers would be to hand-deliver every printer as each user logs on. Ideal, but impractical.

The preferable—and far more feasible—alternative would be to automate deployments using detailed AD criteria. That provides granular control over which clients are targeted and dynamically delivers the right network printers to the right users, even in an environment that’s in constant flux. And configuring those deployments across the entire organization should be as easy as making a few clicks in a centralized administration console.

That’s exactly what our next-generation print management solution allows you to do. No GPOs, no network printer mapping script, no convoluted configuration process. It’s a quick, easy and permanent fix to the huge list of long standing problems when mapping network printers.

PrinterLogic’s unique platform also empowers your end users and support staff when it comes to network printing and mapping printers without admin rights. Our popular self-service installation portal lets end users identify and install nearby printers with a single click. The absence of rights management means that support staff on the service desk can safely deploy printers to users who need them.

Enterprise-scale network printing and mapping printers is a tough job when you don’t have the right tools. PrinterLogic’s on-premises and its new cloud-based SaaS solution make print management of network printers exponentially easier and more cost-effective.

Print Monitoring Software from PrinterLogic

How much visibility do you have into your print environment? Surprisingly, even in this day and age, this is something enterprise-scale organizations struggle with. We now have smart fridges that can analyze their contents and alert us when it’s time to buy more milk. Home thermostats, sensors and lights that can be monitored and controlled from halfway around the world. And yet it’s so hard to find print monitoring software that’s able to give us the real-time status of our entire print environment at a glance.

It’s true that traditional print infrastructures like print servers are able to provide limited—well, very limited—visibility into printer status and print jobs. But while many admins have resigned themselves to the print monitoring status quo, they’ve still wished for more powerful reporting and print job monitoring software.

At PrinterLogic, we’ve never been content with the status quo. Not when it comes to print management, and certainly not when it comes to print monitoring. That was the driving force behind us developing our next-generation enterprise software solution, which enables organizations of all sizes, structures and sectors to eliminate print servers and restore manageability to print management.

As our software transformed what was possible in enterprise print management, we integrated print monitoring functionality that gave admins unprecedented insight into their print environment. From the micro (e.g., individual print jobs, toner levels) to the macro (e.g., departmental trends, consolidation guidance) levels, our solution provides the vital data that’s needed to make informed decisions about consumables, company wide printing behavior and cost-saving initiatives.

With PrinterLogic’s print monitoring features, you can capture and view printer status attributes through an intuitive and customizable SNMP console. Those attributes include current data like paper and ink levels as well as longer-term operational stats such as uptime and lifetime page count. PrinterLogic also has the functionality of print job monitoring software built in, giving you detailed information on specific jobs and user printing trends—even for USB-connected printers.

But gathering data is only the first step. As an admin, you not only have access to this print monitoring data but can arrange it according to different categories like date and time, duplexing, user job title, grayscale/color, department or client computer. That ability to organize a wealth of data quickly and efficiently can shed a lot of light on how cost-saving initiatives can be implemented. Our print management solution can reveal things like:

  • which users in your organization account for the most print jobs
  • who printed a document labeled “classified”
  • how a given department’s consumables usage has changed over time
  • when a print job—or group of print jobs—was carried out
  • where your printers are seeing the heaviest usage

You can even use PrinterLogic to auto-generate reports and have them automatically emailed to managers and department heads. That keeps everyone in the print monitoring loop and makes for a smoother decision-making process.

On top of that, you get unparalleled enterprise-grade print management, including the ability to deploy printers without GPOs and scripts in any environment—even challenging ones like Citrix and VMware.

PrinterLogic’s on-premises print management solution as well as our new SaaS cloud-based solution, PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud), also give you access to sought-after features like Mobile Printing and Pull Printing, which seamlessly introduce advanced but easy-to-use functionality across your entire print environment. Coupled with PrinterLogic’s print monitoring capabilities, that’s a powerful combo that leads to greater efficiency and proven cost savings.

Easy iOS Cloud Printing with PrinterLogic SaaS

Posted by Devin Anderson

Whether it’s a matter of security, ease of use or style (or maybe even a combination of all three), iOS devices have been rapidly adopted in the enterprise. That’s called for some adjustments and accommodations on the part of IT departments, not least where printing is concerned. To cloud print in iOS, Apple naturally recommends AirPrint-compatible devices. But do you really have to purchase new hardware in order to implement true enterprise iOS cloud printing?

Thanks to PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud), the answer is no. PrinterLogic’s next-generation enterprise cloud printing solution enables your iOS users to cloud print from their iPhones and iPads to any network printer. Even legacy printer models. That’s because PrinterLogic SaaS features our advanced Mobile Printing capability, which puts enterprise cloud printing in the hands of any mobile user, regardless of their brand of device or its operating system. And there’s zero client-side software to install.

To cloud print in iOS, all a user has to do is tap the Share button, then “Print,” and finally select a PrinterLogic printer. That’s it. There’s no Bonjour interfacing, specialized hardware or custom app needed.

If the user is off-network or owns a BYOD device, enterprise cloud printing is just as easy. Using email-to-print functionality, guests and off-network employees can print to select printers from any mobile device via that printer’s dedicated email address. By setting restrictions and using rule-based routing in their organization’s mail service provider, admins can place restrictions on allowable file types and lock down who’s allowed to cloud print to a given printer.

Effortless enterprise iOS cloud printing is just one of the advantages of PrinterLogic SaaS compared to other cloud-based printing solutions. PrinterLogic SaaS is based on the same unique combination of direct IP printing and centralized management that powers PrinterLogic’s on-premises enterprise print management software. As such, it’s able to deliver features and ease of use that are unparalleled by current enterprise cloud printing offerings. They include:

  • Seamless integration with VMware and Citrix. An enterprise iOS cloud printing solution that not only supports but actually enhances printing in challenging virtual environments? Hard to believe, but it’s true. PrinterLogic SaaS builds on the proven strengths of its on-premises counterpart.
  • Intuitive yet powerful print management. PrinterLogic SaaS doesn’t stop at basic enterprise cloud printing. It also provides superior print management, so you can quickly add, remove and administer printers as well as drivers anywhere in the organization from a single pane of glass. Setting defaults and configuring advanced options are often as easy as ticking a checkbox—no matter if it’s for individual users or entire departments.
  • Printer deployment without scripts and GPOs. Getting the right printers to the right users has traditionally relied on group policy objects (GPOs) and custom scripts. Not in PrinterLogic SaaS. You can eliminate scripts and GPOs from your deployment toolbox while enjoying full Active Directory integration and granular deployments that are dynamic, automatic and above all accurate.

Because PrinterLogic SaaS leverages direct IP printing, its WAN reliance is vastly reduced relative to other enterprise cloud printing solutions. For example, print jobs travel straight from the client to the printer rather than being routed across the WAN on a round trip to the cloud print server and back. That has the potential to cut WAN data traffic significantly. Also, the client doesn’t need to communicate with PrinterLogic SaaS via the WAN every time a print job is initiated. If the link to the WAN is interrupted, end users can continue printing as normal.

Oh, and did I mention that you can also eliminate print servers with PrinterLogic SaaS?

If you’re looking for the ideal enterprise iOS cloud printing solution, maybe it’s time to think beyond that. PrinterLogic SaaS is capable of making your entire print backbone leaner, more efficient, more powerful and far more cost-effective than any traditional or current cloud print solution.

Healthcare Printing Solutions from PrinterLogic

Posted by Jordan Pusey

When large, diverse healthcare organizations like Princeton Community Hospital, Laser Spine Institute, Guthrie, OhioHealth and the Orthopedic Institute of New Jersey were looking for healthcare printing solutions that would support their need for robust, specialized EMR and EHR printing, many of them had no idea that their entire approach to enterprise print management would change in the process. But it did. And that’s because they discovered and implemented PrinterLogic.

From the outset, our next-generation print management was designed to streamline enterprise print management for any organization, regardless of its size, structure or sector, and that made it ideal for some of the toughest, most challenging environments—particularly hospitals and other healthcare providers.

That’s due to the fact that healthcare and hospital printing solutions have to meet unique, industry-specific demands, such as EHR/EMR printing guidelines, which call for strict confidentiality of patient records and secure printing protocols. As a result, any healthcare or hospital printing solution typically has to integrate tightly and seamlessly with an additional EHR or EMR software platform, many of which are idiosyncratic (to put it lightly) and finicky. Implementing just any enterprise printing software is likely to cause constant incompatibility problems and EHR printing errors, as some organizations have learned the hard way.

However, the small footprint and innate versatility of our enterprise print management solution allow it to achieve what other hospital printing solutions can’t. Time and time again, PrinterLogic has been proven to be implemented quickly, easily and cost-effectively in what are routinely considered the most demanding environments—including Citrix, VMware, Epic and MEDITECH—and revolutionize both EMR printing and healthcare organizations’ approach to print management.

How exactly that happens depends on the use case, but there are a lot of commonalities. For example, more and more hospitals and healthcare organizations have floating staff who need to be able to log into any terminal and print securely to the nearest printer per EMR/EHR printing guidelines. PrinterLogic makes that possible through easy-to-configure dynamic printer deployments that integrate fully with Active Directory but require zero GPOs or scripts. This means you can confidently and accurately deliver printers to staff based on a whole variety of criteria, such as Active Directory criteria or IP address.

And in the event that end users need a different printer than what was automatically deployed to them, they can simply go to PrinterLogic’s acclaimed self-service portal and install printers by themselves with a single click. There’s no need to lose precious time calling the service desk because optional floorplan maps make it incredibly easy for them—even brand-new staff—to identify and choose the right printer.

Conventional hospital printing solutions have also struggled to support printing from mobile devices like tablets. Not PrinterLogic. Our Mobile Printing feature makes it incredibly easy to provide your entire staff with full-featured printing capabilities from their phones and tablets, regardless of operating system and regardless of the brand of printer. And there’s absolutely no client-side software to install and maintain.

Just as importantly, PrinterLogic’s Pull Printing module allows your organization to comply with EMR/EHR printing guidelines by making printing an intentional two-step process. In the first step, the user prints as usual, but the job is not executed immediately. Instead, the user authorizes the print job at the printer using an ID mechanism like a badge or a card reader. Not only does this ensure that sensitive patient information remains in the right hands, it also prevents waste from unclaimed print jobs.

Nor are those the only benefits of PrinterLogic over other healthcare and hospital printing solutions. Because PrinterLogic adopts a centralized approach to enterprise print management, your organization can eliminate print servers altogether while gaining the ability to add, administer and remove printers across the print environment from a single pane of glass. It’s an approach that has provided many healthcare providers with something they never thought they’d have: reliable EMR printing coupled with maximum print availability and effortless enterprise print management.