Generate ROI by Eliminating Print Servers Within Your Company

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Many organizations still view print servers as the unavoidable cost of corporate printing. According to Quocirca’s Cloud Print Services Study, the cost of acquiring and provisioning a print server hovers around $2300. They also require ongoing running costs of close to $1700 per year—not exactly chump change. 

And the cost of replacing them? 

That’s a road nobody wants to go down. 

Now that print servers are about as obsolete as dial-up internet, it might be time to start re-evaluating your print infrastructure to streamline processes and save money. 

We landed a rover on Mars. 

We’re currently training AI to do tasks for us. 

Why can’t humankind make printing cost-efficient and consistent?

There are proven ways to start saving money in your print environment. But first, let’s talk about why print servers are so costly. 

 

Why do print servers cost so much money?

The up-front costs of print servers aren’t a secret. But hidden costs in the form of time and resources spent resolving issues caused by print servers are hard to identify. More often than not, print server issues result in a trickle-down effect that usually ends in a call to the helpdesk when users have finally had enough. 

Take printer deployments, for example. IT may struggle to find the correct drivers, deliver the wrong printer to a user, or even make a script typo—and we all know how complicated scripts can get. All these scenarios waste a lot of time and force organizations to spend money in an area they shouldn’t have to. 

And then there’s security. 

Spooler vulnerabilities have only exacerbated printing issues that used to be routine fixes. Deployments are tricker and take longer to troubleshoot because admins don’t want to open up their organization to security risks. With a global average of $4.3 million per data breach, it’s definitely not a risk worth taking. 

 

The Advantages of Going Serverless

When you eliminate your print servers, you’re not just taking non-essential hardware and software out of circulation. You’re also removing three major sources of IT burden:

Hardware updates and migration: New OS releases and mergers/acquisitions are two events that trigger a print server upgrade. Moving to new print servers is labor-intensive and diverts IT resources from other essential tasks.

Helpdesk calls: When users can’t print because of print server problems or downtime, they flood the helpdesk with calls. While those users wait, IT has to waste time troubleshooting and tracking down the cause of basic printing errors.

Maintenance and management: Print servers are rarely “set it and forget it” hardware. They need regular supervision and intervention. Even something as simple as updating or rolling back print drivers can be time-consuming. And don’t forget those frequent patch installations. 

It’s one thing to kick print servers to the curb and remove that constant source of headaches. But being able to replace your legacy infrastructure with a cloud-native, scalable solution sets you up for current and future success as your company expands. 

That’s what makes PrinterLogic’s print management solution different. 

Through its centrally managed, direct IP printing model, PrinterLogic allows for efficient management of the entire print environment—all from a single pane of glass.

You can only imagine how this translates to optimized print management for distributed organizations like retail, healthcare, and banking. No print servers mean fewer visits to off-site locations. The single UI enables admins to address issues with just a few clicks. And adding and subtracting printers becomes a cakewalk. 

Serverless printing solutions like PrinterLogic have enabled enterprises and managed print service providers to completely eliminate print servers from even the most complex print environments. Distributed retail organization? Cerner/VMware VDI environment? Highly secure government entity? There’s no enterprise printing scenario that PrinterLogic’s serverless printing infrastructure can’t handle, improve, or protect.

 

Choose a Print Management Solution That Pays for Itself

Reducing print infrastructure, streamlining print management, and minimizing printer downtime all contribute to PrinterLogic’s ROI out of the gate.

Children’s Bureau, Inc., a nonprofit social-service agency, saw all those results after going serverless. Even without running dedicated ROI calculations, they identified cost savings through the dramatic reduction in support tickets and smoother print management. 

One independent survey found that 87% of PrinterLogic customers had seen at least a 100% ROI. Almost half reported an ROI of more than 200%.

And what’s more, those results were quick. Seventy-five percent of PrinterLogic customers said they broke even and recouped their investment within one year. More than 90% reported that it was in 18 months or less. 

Some organizations take their savings further by leveraging PrinterLogic’s print auditing and advanced reporting capabilities. Print auditing and advanced reporting features reveal information like:

  • Which departments print the most
  • Money spent on print consumables like toner and paper
  • Detailed print activity down to the printer or user level

That info creates an opportunity for enterprises and managed print service providers to start capitalizing on other areas—yielding them a bigger ROI.

 

Try Our Print Savings Calculator

Interested in learning how much you could save by going serverless? We’ve come up with the perfect formula so you don’t have to crunch the numbers by yourself.

Try our print savings calculator now.

Printer Driver Management with PrinterLogic

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**Originally posted on July 25, 2017**

Enterprise print management would be a lot simpler if it just involved printers. Unfortunately, they’re just one piece of the elaborate puzzle. One of the main reasons for IT headaches is printer driver management. 

It’s true, especially when you’re left dealing with a diverse printer fleet and so many individual drivers you start seeing red. It’s even more problematic with print servers at the helm.

Here’s why. 

Problems With Printer Driver Management

What are some of the most common problems associated with printer driver management? They include but aren’t limited to things like:

  • Driver confusion and incompatibility (e.g., 32- and 64-bit)
  • Poorly coded manufacturer drivers versus limited universal printer driver functionality
  • Difficulty rolling back buggy driver updates
  • Improper driver deployments due to software or user error
  • Decreased performance from large driver repositories
  • Additional printer driver management hassles in Citrix and VMware environments

Some organizations invest in dedicated printer driver management software to help bring some order to this chaos. More often than not, they’re one-trick solutions that are more trouble than they’re worth. They fail to integrate fully and seamlessly with the existing print environment and tend to have uncommon approaches to printer driver management that take features away from you and your users. 

Spooler vulnerabilities are a large contributor to stressful driver management. Admins are still constantly searching for new workarounds that don’t compromise security. Disabled spoolers, fixing prompts without disabling security patches, and a myriad of reinstallations just about had everyone throwing the towel in. And the post-PrintNightmare vulnerabilities keep rolling in. 

How To Address These Printer Driver Management Issues

PrinterLogic’s next-generation print solution changes the whole experience of printer driver management. Even in challenging retail, healthcare, and financial print environments with many locations, our cloud-native software is a comprehensive, cross-platform, and universal print management solution. It’s completely printer-agnostic, saving you from replacing older printers that still work perfectly fine.

The biggest takeaway is you eliminate all of your print servers.

You read that right. ALL of them. 

We replace your print servers with an on-prem or built-in-the-cloud solution that’s infinitely scalable and enables you to use a single interface as your dedicated printer and driver management software. From there, you can deploy, manage, and update drivers anywhere in the organization with just a few clicks. 

Start Simplifying Your Enterprise’s Printer Driver Management

As with printer management, printer driver management with PrinterLogic is easier, more robust, and feature-rich. 

You know those 32- and 64-bit conflicts that bring print spoolers to their knees? 

Those become a non-issue. 

Our enterprise printer driver management feature allows you to maintain a single driver repository with 32- and 64-bit versions side by side but without the potential for crash-causing mix-ups. And our driver management software doesn’t suffer a performance hit when you need to maintain large repositories.

It’s also easy to revert drivers to previous versions if one of them winds up causing trouble. Rollbacks can be carried out for specific users or entire groups with zero hassle. In turn, you can avoid compatibility issues and be confident that deployments are accurate and efficient around the clock. 

Tired of working with individual manufacturer drivers?

If you prefer, you can print to a universal driver instead of dealing with individual manufacturer drivers. You don’t have to worry about dips in performance, either. You can set a wide variety of default printer profile options (e.g., dpi, paper tray, black and white) with the same ease as using our printer driver management software with model-specific drivers. For more flexibility, you can create default settings for a one-time log-on or set them on a recurring basis. 

In short, printer driver management is yesterday’s struggle. By going serverless, it can be stable, effortless, and more versatile.

Printer Deployment: GPO vs. Startup Scripts

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**Originally published on June 21, 2018**

There are an unlimited amount of reasons printer deployments can fail. You couldn’t find the appropriate driver. Point and print restrictions weren’t configured correctly. Or you recently added a new user to Group Policy only to discover printers aren’t showing up. 

Thanks, PrintNightmare.

These issues leave admins wondering, ”What’s the best way to deploy printers?” Is it GPOs, scripts, or neither?

Let’s explore how GPO printer deployments work, compare that with using startup scripts, and then discuss how you can actually deploy printers without using them ever again.

Deploying Printers via GPOs

Group Policy Objects (GPOs) are typically managed by domain controllers on a network. They define actions or settings that individual computers apply during login. Administrators can build out these policies with minimal effort, but there are tradeoffs.

GPOs are easy to set up but aren’t always dependable. They have to replicate all existing domain controllers before workstations can enforce the new policies. Replication can be inconsistent—especially when migrating from an old server OS to a new one. 

What’s more, workstations have to query their Active Directory server and execute the policy before a GPO deployment is complete. If there’s a mixture of desktop OS versions, replication consistency goes down.

Serious GPO printer deployments usually need multiple GPOs to target the right users, which can be hard to manage down the road. The bigger an organization, the more likely (and often) issues surface. And with issues you can expect your users to make multiple calls to the helpdesk when they can’t access the right printer, costing you more money and time.

Deploying Printers via Scripts

An alternative to creating GPOs is using startup scripts. These can be paid for or developed by in-house IT staff. Talented scriptwriters can create scripts to deploy printers to computers in certain IP address ranges, to Active Directory users, etc. While better than GPOs, scripts demand more technical competence, reduce logon performance, and increase operational overhead. 

Scripting is also a process that requires proper documentation to ensure replacement IT staff can configure deployments. You don’t want to be stuck figuring out how the last person set scripts for printer auto-deployments. And you don’t want new hires to have to start from scratch. 

That wouldn’t be a great first week on the job.

Never Touch GPOs or Scripts Again

Let’s face it. Deploying printers via scripts and GPOs isn’t the most efficient way to get things done. After PrintNightmare, every admin was digging for the best way to deploy printers without sacrificing security. 

PrinterLogic’s centralized direct IP print management platform mitigates the cost, risk, and headaches of using GPOs or other unconventional printer deployment methods. Our platform’s centralized management interface can deploy printers based on:

  • Active Directory User, Computer, Group, Container, OU
  • IP address range of computers (great for traveling users)
  • Hostname (of computers)
  • MAC address (of computers)
  • Advanced Group (combination of the above criteria)

deploy-tab

Figure 1: The PrinterLogic SaaS deployment menu offers several targeting options for printer delivery.

So, why is this better than GPOs, and easier than scripts?

It’s more dependable and managed by a small desktop application designed from the ground up for reliable, low-overhead communication.

It’s easier than scripts because deployments are handled within our intuitive Admin Console. From there, you can manage direct IP-connected printers without print servers.

Other benefits of eliminating print servers include:

  • Cloud-native centralized management
  • No single point of failure
  • Improved security
  • Lower infrastructure costs
  • Print job auditing and tracking
  • Easier driver management
  • Address printing issues faster

The time and labor costs associated with print server maintenance and inconsistent printer deployments become a thing of the past. Customers rave about the time they saved using PrinterLogic to auto-deploy printers and eliminate their print servers. 

Helion Automotive Industries leveraged PrinterLogic’s automated deployment feature to deliver printers to users, saving them countless hours without resorting to GPOs or scripts.

Anytime anybody’s added to that AD group, they just log in and PrinterLogic gets them all the printers for their department. You can set defaults if you want to, too, so it’s definitely saved us a lot of time on day-to-day issues.

-Jeff Kingsmore, System Support Manager, Helion

Lufthansa Technik AG reduced IT overhead and migrated 12,500 employees away from print servers without them even noticing. 

It was truly a seamless process. Our employees don’t even know that this huge migration project even took place, and that’s exactly how it should be.

-Manfred Lapp, Project Manager, Lufthansa Technik AG

Want to see printer deployments without GPOs and scripts in action? 

Request a free 30-day trial here.

PrinterLogic Achieves ISO 27001:2013 Certification

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We are pleased to announce that PrinterLogic has achieved ISO 27001:2013 certification. Awarded by Consilium Labs, an accredited third party, this certification is proof that PrinterLogic has passed extensive audits and has met rigorous requirements for standardization and quality assurance. 

Widely considered one of the world’s top print management solutions, PrinterLogic believes data security and integrity are first and foremost. As a global organization that has delivered print management solutions to over 8000 businesses from SMBs to Fortune 100 companies, we strive to ensure our clients and their suppliers, vendors, and other third parties have unrivaled data protection.

What is ISO 27001:2013 Certification?

The International Standard Organization (ISO) was established to help global organizations protect critical data and reduce exposure to breaches that lead to financial loss and reputational damage. 

ISO 27001:2013 encompasses the protection of all kinds of confidential and sensitive data like Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Personal Health Information (PHI), and Payment card Industry Data (PCI), as well as many types of information storage. It helps organizations satisfy various business, legal, and regulatory requirements. Additionally, it provides businesses with a framework that allows them to monitor and fine-tune their information security systems (ISMS) as their business evolves. 

Why did we become ISO certified?

Print security is one of the biggest priorities for today’s customers. Security professionals need proof that the vendor they are engaging with is secure and won’t pose a risk to their data. 

Our reason for choosing ISO 27001:2013 certification is to ensure we continue to monitor and modify our security posture to mitigate risk to your data when it goes through our systems. 

In PrinterLogic’s default configurations, print jobs stay local and do not leave your organization’s network. However, metadata and PII such as user name, email, IP address, and computer names for print jobs are sent to the PrinterLogic instance via TLS 1.2 for reporting purposes.* The metadata that travels through the PrinterLogic cloud instance contains print job date, time, page count, and other basic data. For more information, check out our SaaS Security White Paper. 

Along with providing you information security assurance, customers enjoy additional benefits that expedite the review process and make it easier to do business with us, like: 

Internationally-recognized security compliance: As a prestigious global quality standard, ISO certification shows customers a commitment to executing consistent and high-quality security practices. This satisfies a range of customer requirements and audits that save time and money.  

Reduce the risk of cyber attacks: ISO 27001:2013 helps us identify potential security weaknesses and shows that we have undergone preventive measures to ensure all your print data is protected within our organization. 

A fully-executed security program: Through defined processes and the development of a security-driven culture, ISO-compliant organizations work on constantly improving their security posture even after achieving certification status. 

Satisfy other industry standards: Customers may need a print management solution that covers other standards as required by their company. ISO 27001:2013 lays the groundwork for organizations to satisfy other frameworks, legislation, and standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and NIST CSF.  

How can current and future customers view our ISO credentials?

Drata, a security and compliance automation platform, was used as a third-party ISMS to support the ISO certification process. The platform assists us in streamlining documentation, receiving insight into our security posture, and gives us control over our compliance standings so we can quickly address issues when they occur. 

Want insight into our certifications, vulnerability assessments, and security policies?

To build trust through transparency, we invite prospective and current customers to view our current compliance standings in the Drata Trust Center. To request a copy of our ISO certification, click here. 

Our job is far from over. Cybersecurity is constantly changing, as is the maneuverability of cyber attackers. As an ISO-certified solution, PrinterLogic is committed to maintaining its ISO standing and improving information security strategies for years to come.

Move forward with us as we continue to improve processes and adjust our security best practices to ensure your company’s data remains safe within our organization. 

*If optional Off-Network Printing is turned on, print job data goes through PrinterLogic’s cloud instance and is routed to a printer on a different network. This is especially useful for Zero Trust environments, remote work, and transactions with business affiliates. Such advanced configurations are enabled by the customer. 

 

Centralized Printer Management

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Originally published on August 19, 2015

When you’re working toward streamlining your enterprise print environment, centralized printer management should be one of the highest priorities on your list. That’s because implementing centralized printer management addresses several key areas that are crucial to the process of simplifying and consolidating networked printers—and reducing IT burden. 

It’s particularly the case for retail, financial, healthcare, and government organizations operating with offices dispersed throughout regions or other countries. 

What is centralized printer management?

Centralized printer management means instead of shifting between sites with different hardware and individuals with varied areas of oversight, you can administer everything from one terminal. That logistical integration alone makes your network printer management more efficient—saving time, money, and resources. It also eliminates the need for off-site visits just to address printer issues. 

Why choose centralized printer management?

Admins get “the four Cs” by moving to centralized printer management:

Consolidation: Connect and manage all your users, devices, and locations from a simple interface—no matter where you are.

Convenience: Address printing issues immediately from a single pane of glass without having to make frequent off-site visits. 

Control: Easily set default printer preferences, add or delete printers in your printer fleet, and set up one-time or automatic deployments.

Cost-efficiency: Reduce operating costs that impact your bottom line by gaining insight into print activity across your organization.

A solution like PrinterLogic offers these benefits and more. 

Centralized Printer Management With PrinterLogic

PrinterLogic was developed around the concept of centralized printer management because it’s a sought-after feature in any scenario, regardless of whether you’ve got a highly distributed environment or just a single site. No matter where you or your IT staff are located, PrinterLogic’s intuitive web-based Admin Console allows you to monitor every networked printer in your organization—with or without domains or trusts—from a single pane of glass.

You can only imagine what this level of control offers you and your users.

Print-related requests can be taken care of instantaneously.

Printing disappears from your agenda during off-site visits. 

And user satisfaction increases since you can administer any network printer to them without a hitch. 

Using PrinterLogic’s Admin Console, you can easily create new printers and then deploy them to end users automatically without the hassle of having to use GPOs, scripts, or print servers. You can delete printers from workstations or entire departments, too, with just as much ease.

Plus, you can do everything in between regarding network printer management. 

PrinterLogic lets you drill down to individual printers through hierarchies like country, building, department, and floor. Once you’ve selected a printer, you can modify individual settings such as the driver, port, name, duplexing, color, paper type, and so on. Those changes are automatically pushed out to printers on the end user workstations. You can even set default printer preferences by simply checking a box.

Want to edit group properties quickly? Just use the find-and-replace function to adjust deployment assignments, drivers, ports, comments, and other variables for hundreds or even thousands of printer objects at once.

This same approach to central printer management also applies to drivers. PrinterLogic also allows you to update drivers individually or en masse. And you can configure detailed parameters such as driver settings and profiles, giving you even more fine-grained control over printers throughout your entire organization. If you don’t want to deal with individual driver manufacturers, PrinterLogic empowers you to print to a universal driver for more flexibility. 

Start managing your distributed locations with ease.

Regardless of the size of your organization or the number of printers and locations you have, PrinterLogic simplifies how you manage print. We start with eliminating your print servers and moving you over to our cloud-native, direct IP printing platform. In return, you get a bird’s-eye view over “everything printing” in your organization.

So, if you’re considering centralized printer management as a means to cut costs and take back control of your distributed locations, what are you waiting for? 

Here’s a free 30-day trial to get you started. 

What’s the Proper Way to Deploy Printers Post-PrintNightmare?

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What’s the proper way to deploy printers post-PrintNightmare?

It’s the million-dollar question on almost every IT-filled social feed.  

Following PrintNightmare and the endless flow of patch releases that ensued, everything in traditional print environments felt broken. Deployments via GPOs became a chore. You received error messages when trying to install printer drivers, despite the drivers already existing on your system. Even if you didn’t run into issues like these, you were at least stuck getting the proper mitigations in place so users could print. 

In short, PrintNightmare spooked everyone. 

And when Microsoft released patch KB5005625 back in September 2021, everything was done and dusted.

At least, that’s what most of us thought.

 

Why are we still talking about PrintNightmare?

Because patches are still being released to stop attackers from gaining SYSTEM privileges. 

To be more exact, recently, Microsoft released patches for 68 vulnerabilities. One of the most notable vulnerabilities, CVE-2022-41073, affected the Print Spooler service. A month before that, a separate spooler vulnerability, CVE-2022-38028, caused admins to install more patches to keep threats out.  

Sound familiar? 

It’s not like this wasn’t predictable. Since July 2021, over 65,000 attacks have targeted print servers, and around 31,000 of those happened in 2022. Print servers continue to be a popular attack vector. As Satnam Narang, a senior staff research engineer at Tenable, points out, PrintNightmare may have just opened up the floodgates to more potential threats:

We’ve long warned that once Pandora’s box was open with PrintNightmare, that flaws within Windows Print Spooler would come back to haunt organizations, and based on the success ransomware groups and other threat actors have had with PrintNightmare, a continued focus on the ubiquitous nature of Windows Print Spooler makes it one of the most attractive targets for privilege escalation and remote code execution.

Achieving a vulnerability-free traditional print environment seems highly unlikely, given the constant updates required to stop threats. Each blurb in the news about print spooler vulnerabilities is further evidence to cybercriminals that print servers are, in fact, the “Swiss cheese” of legacy systems—they just have too many holes.

Tired of rolling the dice on security? We have a few quick ways to help you deploy printers without jumping through endless loopholes. 

 

Here are the best ways to deploy printers post-PrintNightmare…

Step 1: Get rid of your print servers. 

If legacy systems like print servers and spoolers are already deemed the root of the problem, doesn’t it make sense to eliminate them? You’d get rid of the patch installations, maintenance costs, and the single point of failure. Plus, you don’t have to find workarounds to allow your users to print securely.

Serverless, cloud-based print management solutions simplify driver management across your entire print environment. Instead of managing multiple driver repositories or outdated print drivers, you can store and manage printers, drivers, and profiles from any manufacturer from a single driver repository. You can even print to a universal driver instead of wrestling with individual manufacturer drivers—without worrying about incompatibilities.  

You’re probably thinking about the stress of finding a new solution. Potential printer downtime when migrating to a new platform. Problems with learning how to maneuver new software or hardware. All are valid reasons to hesitate.

However, the risk of leaving yourself vulnerable isn’t worth the cost of an average print-related data breach. 

Don’t just take it from us. 

Here are a few answers from Reddit users on how to deploy printers post-PrintNightmare:

The best method I’ve seen is getting rid of print servers and use PrinterLogic to deploy direct IP printing. 

-Reddit User jmp242

PrinterLogic completely took printers off my list. It just works, and I hardly think about it until our rep emails me asking how things are going.

-Reddit User mortalwombat


Step 2: Eliminate scripts and GPOs.

Getting rid of print servers already means that deployments are easier since you don’t have to try various workarounds that may sacrifice security. Similar to print servers, deploying printers via scripts and GPOs is unreliable and old-school. GPO printer deployments offer a long list of limitations and potential failure points, often leading to calls to the helpdesk to solve the issue. This also results in high costs and more aggravation on your end.  

Take it from this admin, who got tired of deployment issues and removed GPOs and scripts completely:

We had so many problems with deploying printers via GPO and scripts that we eventually went to PrinterLogic.

-Reddit User randomguy3

Migrating to a centrally managed, serverless printing platform eliminates scripts and GPOs for good and gives you granular control over which users get which printer. Deploy printers individually or en masse, one-time or automated—all by ticking a few boxes.

PrinterLogic is the bomb. It has saved us thousands of dollars in color printing costs by being able to reset printer preferences after every job. And deploying printers is sooooooo simple.

-Reddit User bla4free (IT Manager)

Check out the Reddit feed

 

Step 3: Try Serverless Printing (for free)

If we made eliminating print servers, scripting, and GPOs sound easy, that’s because it really is.

Another vote for PrinterLogic. We did a 2-week trial with them and immediately signed the contract after the first week. They helped get us fully up and running in about 2 hours.

-Reddit User Randalldeflagg

PrinterLogic offers a quick, painless way to go serverless and move to our centrally managed direct IP printing platform. Experience almost no printer downtime during the migration process. Get optimized security and accurate deployments without worrying about compromising your organization’s data security. 

And be the problem-solver to all IT professionals searching through Google for “How to deploy printers post-PrintNightmare.”

Try PrinterLogic free for 30 days to get a glimpse of stress-free print management.

Print Management Solutions for Managed Service Providers

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**Originally published July 22, 2016**

If you’re a managed service provider (MSP), you want to deliver the best experience to your customers at the best possible price. That seems pretty self-explanatory.

And when your specialty is print management, you leverage the most efficient, cost-effective, flexible, feature-rich, and robust print management solutions to accomplish that goal. Which is why PrinterLogic’s print management software should be at the top of your list. 

Our leading print management platform surpasses conventional solutions like print servers by combining proven direct IP technology with the kind of forward-thinking functionality that supports modern, dynamic enterprise environments. Our core strengths include centralized administration from a single pane of glass, effortless printer and driver management, and end-user empowerment through an intuitive self-service portal—capabilities that have the potential to transform enterprise printing in any organization. 

And as a bonus, they can also streamline your own print management services by placing far fewer demands on administrative support and the service desk.

Discover Next-Gen Print Management

Unlike many third-party print management solutions, PrinterLogic isn’t a clunky and time-consuming new infrastructure to set up. Our serverless print management platform integrates quickly and seamlessly with print environments of all kinds, including those that rely on virtual solutions like Citrix and VMware. PrinterLogic enhances the native printing functionality of these environments through sought-after features like improved location-based printing while addressing their persistent flaws, such as oversized print jobs and heavy print-related WAN traffic.

We also offer robust supplemental features that you can use to boost your customers’ competitive edge while adding value to your own print management services. Just a few of these options include:

  • Advanced Reporting: Gain detailed insight into device usage, use of consumables, and printing trends across the enterprise. By gathering hard, up-to-the-minute data on all aspects of the print environment, you can curb excesses and zero in on printing costs with pinpoint precision. Our Advanced Reporting even provides valuable printer consolidation guidance.
  • Mobile Printing: Enterprises are still struggling in their search for reliable print management solutions that will enable them to embrace the ever-growing numbers of mobile and BYOD users. PrinterLogic’s Mobile Printing delivers mobile printing capabilities to any device and any printer without requiring mobile users to install extra software. Not only is it incredibly simple for end users, but it also gives admins complete control over who is authorized to print.
  • Secure Release Printing: Some print management solutions might promise ease of use, but does that have to come at the expense of security? Not with PrinterLogic. Our Secure Release Printing options keep sensitive documents away from prying eyes by enabling users to release print jobs to select printers only when they are ready. Users can release jobs online, with a badge, using a QR code, or at the printer with the control panel. With Secure Release, users keep their confidential documents protected every step of the way.
  • Off-Network Printing: With both a cloud and direct IP option, your customers can take one more step toward a complete Zero Trust Architecture by using our Off-Network Printing options. As more companies need support for remote, hybrid, and contract workers, keeping a network locked down is increasingly difficult. This is especially true for print. But our solution makes it easy for any user to print no matter what network they are on.
  • Multi-tenant Functionality: A necessary component to managing multiple customers, our platform makes it easy to manage everything from a single Admin Console. Make administrative changes, deploy updates, and more in just minutes.

This killer suite of functionality and flexibility is why print management MSPs who are looking to provide best-in-class service with less overhead are adopting PrinterLogic as their recommended print management solution. The MSPs who don’t might soon find themselves at a severe disadvantage.

How To Solve These 5 Retail Print Management Challenges

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The demands placed on IT professionals in retail organizations are a bit unconventional compared to other industries.

Locations spread across different regions or countries make routine visits to remote sites time-consuming and more expensive. Printer troubleshooting is more urgent to maintain high customer and employee satisfaction. And retail-specific printers like point-of-sale and label printers add to the complexities of presumably mixed OS environments. 

It’s a lot for an IT team to handle.

Let’s discuss some common retail print management challenges and highlight how adopting a serverless printing infrastructure alleviates these issues.

 

Common Retail Print Management Challenges

 

Print Server Expenses

Maintaining, updating, and licensing a single print server costs companies thousands of dollars per year. Replacing them doesn’t come cheap, either. Depending on your needs, you could be looking at prices between $5000-$20,000 per server. 

We could talk about the ROI and cost savings companies would get if they reduced infrastructure all day. However, time is where the stress around print servers comes into play. 

For IT teams, print servers require constant upkeep to maintain steady printing for users. Despite all this invested time and effort, security issues continue to plague traditional print environments. Vulnerabilities like PrintNightmare added fuel to the fire, causing IT teams to perform more updates than usual to avoid data breaches. All this manual intervention takes time away from other tasks and decreases IT teams’ overall productivity.

 

Managing Remote Locations

The retail industry is about as dispersed as they come. Between addressing individual needs and managing hundreds (if not thousands) of users in multiple locations, your IT team is burning the candle at both ends. 

In distributed print environments utilizing a conventional print server architecture, issues usually become magnified and leave IT teams stuck with manually performing time-intensive tasks like installing printers for individual computers, updating drivers, changing printers, and restarting servers.

 

Too Many Print-related Helpdesk Calls

Even the best IT teams run into an overwhelming number of print-related helpdesk tickets. They eat up time and negatively impact workflows. A Gartner report notes that 40% of helpdesk calls are print-related. 

And they usually come out something like this:

“My printer won’t print!” 

“I want to use this printer, but I can’t.”

“Why am I not able to print in color?”

Tickets like these compare to that feeling of stepping on a rogue lego in your kitchen—they’re painful and just keep coming back. They aren’t budget-friendly either at $22 per ticket.

 

Low Visibility

Do your users print in color instead of monochrome? 

Which printers are used the most? 

Are there specific locations that print more than others?

If you’re unable to answer these types of questions, printing could be eating away at your budget. Unfortunately, this is the case for many admins in traditional print environments with 90% of organizations having no idea how much they spend on printing. Most don’t even know the number of printers in their fleet. 

How can admins address printing issues or costs under these circumstances?

Well, you can’t fix what you can’t see. Without proper insight into your organization’s users, devices, and locations, IT teams can’t track down printer issues or establish better printing practices for their organization.

 

Unreliable Deployments

Using GPOs to deploy printers is a tedious process that usually results in various issues. While GPOs are easier to set up, they aren’t always dependable. Some common problems admins run into are

  • GPOs applied to incorrect users,
  • incorrect drivers,
  • incorrect GPO permissions,
  • and disabled links.

And these are just a few of them. With potential problems like these, there’s a high probability that your printer won’t make it to the desired user on the first go. As a result, you spend more time resolving print problems and get more calls to the helpdesk.

 

How PrinterLogic Simplifies Retail Print Management

 

1. It removes the single point of failure.

PrinterLogic’s serverless printing platform provides a proven way to eliminate the single point of failure in your print environment. Instead of falling victim to printer downtime because of driver conflicts or installation hiccups, IT teams get built-in redundancy that allows users to keep printing with no loss in performance or functionality. 

By eliminating print servers, print jobs are relayed between the user’s workstation and the printer, increasing print speeds and doing away with managing heavy WAN traffic.

Oh, and that whole PrintNightmare scare? Admins can finally stop worrying about keeping up with patch installations to avoid vulnerabilities.

 

2. It gives admins centralized management.

It’s easier to solve problems when you can view everything from one place. PrinterLogic’s Admin Console enables admins to streamline print-related tasks and view their entire printing infrastructure from a single pane of glass. You can even add printers or make changes to existing ones if needed.

Why is this important for retail? 

It provides businesses with a scalable solution. 

When a retail company opens or acquires a new location, new printers can be added with just a few clicks instead of wondering about configurations or adding new print servers to meet print demand. 

Take it from Reggie Campbell, a network administrator for Cott Corporation, who said,

“PrinterLogic is for anybody who wants to go from a traditional server-based print solution to a unified, multisite, multi-state solution.”

 

3. It eliminates scripting and GPOs.

No more depending on low percentage chances to accurately deploy printers. PrinterLogic puts an end to complex troubleshooting issues by getting rid of scripts and GPOs entirely. Plus, admins get granular control over which users get which printers with a platform that integrates seamlessly with Active Directory (AD) and offers a variety of deployment criteria.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from eliminating scripts and GPOs is the time admins save on the deployment process in general. By simply checking a few boxes, admins can set up automatic deployments for their users individually or en masse—all from a single pane of glass.

 

4. It reduces print-related helpdesk calls. 

The first three steps listed above benefit admins by reducing helpdesk calls by as much as 95%.

Eliminating the single point of failure means less maintenance and troubleshooting when problems arise. Admins can add or delete printers from their fleet and address potential issues before they happen from our Admin Console. Printer installations and deployments are quickly resolved by ticking just a few boxes. 

Damage control becomes a thing of the past.

All of the advantages of going serverless translate to increased user satisfaction and reduced costs, resulting in a nearly instant ROI.

 

5. Admins can track costs on a user, device, and organizational level.

We can’t talk about printing without discussing sustainability. 

With PrinterLogic, admins gain automated insights into all print activity in their organization on the user, device, and organizational levels. Via in-depth cost analysis reports, admins can track departmental usage, paper usage, and paper waste to drive better decision-making. 

Admins can set up advanced reporting to monitor the SNMP status of printers and receive alerts when printers go down or need servicing. 

This type of comprehensive tracking gives admins a complete overview of the dollar value of overall print consumable usage, helping to tackle sustainability initiatives. 

 

Feeling “Done” With Print Servers?

I’m sure you’ve noticed the recurring theme: traditional print environments drain retail IT teams’ time, money, and resources.

Eliminating your print servers is the first step to make up for lost time and money. 

So, where do you go from here?

PrinterLogic provides you and your users with a centrally managed direct IP printing platform that takes all the guesswork out of print management and gives you advanced insight into your entire printer fleet across remote locations. On top of that, experience more free time by eliminating scripts and GPOs and reducing print-related helpdesk calls.

Ready to go serverless? Sign up for a free 30-day trial and reap all of the benefits of serverless printing. 

Want a more in-depth look? See how a large UK retailer with over 2,500 locations removed 400 pieces of hardware, got rid of scripting and GPOs, and nearly eliminated all print-related helpdesk tickets after going with PrinterLogic.