Best Strategies for Deploying Print Servers

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So, your organization has reached a point where it’s time to deploy another—or maybe your first ever—print server. Just like every other hardware, there’s a good way and a not-so-good way to deploy them. And there are alternatives to print servers that you might not have considered yet. 

Before you start down any path, you’ll want to think about your preferred topology. 

Will you have a single centralized network print server or will you have localized print servers distributed across your organization?

Let’s explore the pros and cons of each one. 

 

The Good and Bad of Centralized Print Servers

A centralized print server consolidates your print management infrastructure in one place. That makes print management more convenient, but it also introduces two potentially serious problems. The first is WAN vulnerability, as the WAN connection will be the only link between the network print server and remote locations. Should the WAN be interrupted, so will print activity for the affected location. 

The second issue is that a centralized print server creates a single point of failure. To guard against this, expensive redundancy measures are needed, although this will also create additional work for the print management team.

 

The Good and Bad of Localized Print Servers

Localized print servers allow you to keep the number of clients per server low. Because print server performance can suffer as the number of connected clients increases, fewer clients on more print servers sounds like a wise idea. 

However, increasing the number of print servers also complicates print management because the printer drivers, print queues, software, and user pool need to be maintained across each of them which drives up costs. When you upgrade, you’ll usually need to rely on a print server migration tool (provided a suitable one is available) to bring every single print server up to date.

 

Tips for Choosing the Best Print Server Model

Understanding the strengths and drawbacks of those two basic topologies will help you determine how to best structure your current print server deployment to build a solid foundation for future upgrades and deployments. Because print servers in any configuration have limits to their scalability, whichever architecture you choose will have an impact on how your IT environment expands and evolves in the coming years.

Starting as you mean to go on is an equally good mantra when setting up your organization’s network print server. Here are a few friendly pieces of advice to consider:

  • Clutter is the enemy, and less is more (or at least more manageable). 
  • Keep drivers to an absolute minimum, as too many drivers can be resource-intensive and cause print spooler problems. 
  • Test initial drivers thoroughly before deploying them. Rogue drivers are notorious for crashing print spoolers. 
  • Enable driver isolation and use up-to-date (v4) drivers to minimize the possibility of spooler crashes.

Lastly, you’ll need to look at your current as well as your future IT environment with a wide-angle lens. Does your organization have a mix of clients running different operating systems? Are you planning to transition to mobile or Chromebook-type clients? Is secure printing important to your organization? 

Your answers to those questions will determine what shape your print server deployment takes and whether or not you’ll need to augment that infrastructure with additional third-party solutions.

 

Do you really need a print server to print?

With all that in mind, perhaps the most fundamental step in print server deployment is asking yourself whether you really need one at all. PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management solution does everything you demand of print servers—but without the WAN vulnerabilities, the expanding infrastructure, the limits to scalability, and the susceptibility to PrintNightmare.

PrinterLogic’s SaaS solution allows you to manage your entire print environment, no matter how distributed, from a single pane of glass. Better still, you can deliver printers to users without relying on GPOs or scripts and easily implement advanced functionality like Mobile Printing. You can even empower end users to install printers themselves in the Self-Service Printer Installation Portal. 

 

Already using print servers?

So, what if you’ve deployed a print server (or several) in your organization? 

PrinterLogic makes the transition to powerful, centrally managed direct IP printing quick and easy. It features a handy print server migration tool that imports all your printers, drivers, and profiles, so you can seamlessly manage your entire print environment from a centralized location and eliminate your print servers—and all their attendant costs and hassle—in record time.

Even when done properly, print server deployment is no small task. It takes a lot of time and planning, but even if you make all the right moves, your organization is still stuck with their inherent limitations and security vulnerabilities. 

It stands to reason that the best way to deploy print servers is not deploying them…ever.

Go serverless. 

Webinar Recap: The Best SysAdmin Tool You’re Not Using

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As a sysadmin, you’re asked to do miracle work at a rapid pace. You’re tasked with helping your company drive forward (sometimes on a tight budget) and are in charge of making critical decisions on which solutions can solve all the pain points plaguing you and your end users. 

What if we told you there is a tool you can add to your toolbox to simplify the end user’s experience and reduce your workload?

On July 25th, two of our experts, Katie and Kayla, collaborated to discuss the Best SysAdmin Tool You’re Not Using and uncovered how making a few subtle changes to your print environment boosts productivity and positively impacts your company’s bottom line. The webinar recording is below to catch anything you missed, and we summarized the key points for easy reading. 

Watch the webinar

 

Eliminating print servers to reduce costs

What’s the key to reducing print costs? Moving your current print infrastructure to the cloud. 

Switching to a serverless printing infrastructure allows you to streamline print management and minimize IT intervention by helping you take the following steps:

  • Migrate your existing printer objects from your print servers to a cloud-native platform.
  • Manage all printers, drivers, and settings from a centralized Admin Console. 
  • Deploy printers, updates, and changes to end users—without scripts and GPOs.
  • Print securely by keeping print jobs on the local network and utilizing robust features.

And if it sounds too easy, that’s because it is. You no longer need print servers and can manage all of your printers from a single pane of glass. Additionally, you may find underutilized printers in your fleet that you can throw out—translating into more savings.

 

Enhancing the overall printing experience

Serverless printing boosts productivity for both IT teams and end users by providing a few key features to streamline printer deployments and installations. For admins, all printer drivers can be deployed from a centralized Admin Console which provides admins with granular control over which users have access to which printers. Plus, you can configure automated deployments based on IP address if you employ a mobile workforce to allow easier access to printers on-the-go.

But what’s in it for end users?

For an even more hands-off approach to deployments, admins can empower users to install printers themselves without calling the helpdesk via the Self-Service Printer Installation Portal. All the user has to do is click their desired printer on a floor plan map or dropdown list. Productivity increases and users can move around the organization knowing they don’t need IT for printer installs. This feature alone has reduced print-related helpdesk tickets by up to 95% for PrinterLogic customers.

 

Bolstering security with advanced features 

Many companies are on the fence about cloud-based print management because of their industry’s strict security requirements. But with PrinterLogic, you can meet industry compliance standards and achieve a Zero Trust print environment with features that protect confidential documents and information, including:

  • Secure Release Printing (pull printing)
  • Off-Network Printing
  • Integrations with major IdP providers

In addition to security features, PrinterLogic’s SaaS solution is certified by ISO 27001:2013 and SOC 2 Type 2, meaning we have the systems, people, and processes in place to keep your customer and company data secure on a global scale. 

 

Freeing up your time with serverless printing

Saving money and strengthening security is great and all, but how does that translate into more time for sysadmins? 

Well, instead of worrying about hardware refreshes, security patches, and Windows 2012 Server end-of-life, you can finally start pursuing other projects to help drive your business forward. Overall, print-related issues decrease because users no longer have to call the helpdesk to have printers installed. Plus, you can start tackling digital transformation or other Zero Trust initiatives since printing is already checked off your list.

And remember that new important project you talked with your team about a while back? Yeah, you can finally do that too. 

 

The top 5 reasons you deserve PrinterLogic

The truth is, you deserve a way out of print-related issues so you can finally start doing tasks that promote company growth and provide ample opportunities for you and your team to succeed. 

So what are you waiting for? 

It’s time to spoil yourself a little and simplify the way you manage print for these five reasons:

  1. You can reduce costs.
  2. You can be more proactive rather than reactive.
  3. You can better support end users.
  4. You can bolster your organization’s security.
  5. You can have more free time to focus on more impactful projects.

If you have more questions about eliminating your print servers, tune in to the Q&A portion of the video where many of your peers’ burning questions are answered by Katie and Kayla. 

 

Learn how much you can save on printing

Want a breakdown of how much you’ll actually save on print management by eliminating your print servers? 

We’ve developed a free print savings calculator tool that accounts for time spent on print-related helpdesk tickets, annual print server costs, and paper usage to help you learn how much you can actually save on printing by moving to the cloud. 

Try the print savings calculator.

How Does Pull Printing Support Your Organizations in 2023?

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In today’s fast-paced digital era, businesses are searching for ways to secure their data and documents without disrupting printing processes. One feature that has gained mainstream prominence is pull printing. Also known as follow-me printing or secure printing, pull printing transforms traditional printing workflows by introducing a user-friendly approach to authentication and keeping confidential documents in the right hands. 

In this blog post, we will delve into the concept of pull printing and uncover three ways pull printing supports businesses in 2023. 

 

What is pull printing?

At its core, pull printing is a print management strategy that allows users to securely release and retrieve their print jobs from any network-connected printer within an organization. Unlike the traditional “push” method, where print jobs are sent directly to a specific printer, pull printing employs a virtual queue system. Users send their documents to the virtual queue and can then authenticate themselves at any pull printing-enabled printer to release and print their files.

Pull printing has become so widely adopted that its capabilities have extended to remote employees that need to print off-network. Click here to learn more about pull printing for off-network and remote employees. 

 

How does pull printing streamline printing processes?

One of the key advantages of pull printing is its ability to streamline printing workflows, optimizing efficiency and productivity—while adding an extra layer of security. With the traditional approach, employees often face long queues at specific printers, leading to delays and frustration. To top it all off, users can retrieve all of their queued print jobs at the printer in bulk, instead of making a trip to the printer for every print job. 

Pull printing offers a device-agnostic approach to printing as well. Users can send print jobs from their computers, laptops, or mobile devices to a virtual queue (instead of spooling on a print server), allowing them to print on demand at their convenience. This flexibility saves time and improves productivity, as employees can retrieve their documents from any nearby printer without having to wait in line or walk to a specific location. 

Moreover, if a printer is out of order or busy, users can easily redirect their print jobs to an available device or simply walk to another pull printing-enabled printer to release their print jobs, further enhancing efficiency.

 

How does pull printing optimize security?

In addition to streamlining workflows, pull printing significantly enhances document security. In traditional print environments, sensitive documents may be left unattended in shared output trays, increasing the risk of accidental (or intentional) document theft. Even if documents aren’t stolen, the last thing you want is for employees to see sensitive information like how much money Tom in sales is raking in or a list of expected layoffs following a merger. 

Pull printing addresses this concern by requiring user authentication at the printer before releasing the print job, ensuring that only authorized individuals can access and retrieve the printed materials, mitigating the risk of data and confidentiality breaches.

Industries dealing with sensitive information, such as healthcare, finance, and legal services, greatly benefit from pull printing’s heightened security measures. Confidential patient records, financial statements, legal documents, and other sensitive materials remain protected until the intended recipient is physically present at the printer and authenticates their identity.

 

How does pull printing address sustainability initiatives?

Pull printing offers instant financial and environmental benefits to organizations by minimizing print waste and associated costs. Instead of automatically printing every document, print jobs remain in the virtual queue until the user releases them at the printer. This allows users to review their documents, make corrections, or delete unnecessary pages before printing. 

The reduction in print waste not only saves money on paper and ink but also contributes to a more sustainable environment. According to Deloitte’s 2023 Sustainability Report, 54% of organizations use climate-friendly solutions to achieve their sustainability goals. 

And this push for sustainability isn’t only to preserve the environment, either. It’s to lure in eco-conscious consumers. 

Research shows that consumers have become more selective in the brands they choose. A separate Deloitte study shows that consumers prefer companies actively reducing their carbon footprint and committing to ethical working practices—both of which pull printing can help cover.  

 

So, is pull printing a must-have feature?

If your organization is adopting additional security measures and viewing sustainability as a key player in your future business success—then, yes. Even if you’re only looking to cut print costs, implementing pull printing pays quick dividends. 

As businesses strive for increased efficiency, productivity, and security, pull printing emerges as a valuable tool. Its user-centric approach and enhanced document security make it an ideal choice for organizations of all sizes and industries. By implementing pull printing, businesses can optimize their printing processes, cut costs, and strengthen their overall security posture, setting the stage for success in 2023 and beyond.

At PrinterLogic, we offer a free 30-day trial so you can see if pull printing is a good fit for your current environment. Schedule a demo today. 

 

How Print Management Services Can Reduce Printing Costs

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You’ve asked users to print less, stop printing in color, and use duplex for every print job. As a result, your users have risen up in rebellion and continue to make costly printing mistakes—printing in simplex, using color ink for every print job, and leaving jobs in the print tray. 

We’re kidding, of course. 

But when you’re trying reduce print costs in traditional print environments, it is a constant struggle. Print management services can help combat habits that make printing expensive. 

 

The reasons you’re overspending on printing. 

Printing and print servers have a closer relationship to your organization’s bottom line than you may think. Here are a few overlooked expenses in traditional print environments:

  • Print consumable waste (e.g., toner, paper)
  • Purchasing, deploying, and maintaining servers and endpoint devices
  • Time spent on print-related helpdesk calls—for users as well as IT staff
  • Lost productivity due to printer downtime and print service interruptions
  • Excessive time and resources devoted to deployments and driver management

And those are only the major ones. 

Add them up in dollars and it will likely amount to a shockingly high figure—which is money that your organization could be saving or allocating to other areas. The problem is, conventional print management services don’t address these issues in a systematic way. These preventable costs have become an accepted part of the status quo.

It doesn’t have to be like that. Forward-thinking print management services can reduce printing costs dramatically.

 

How do print management services save you money?

Think of print management services as the ultimate tune-up of your print environment. You’ll no longer be stuck performing tedious server maintenance, deployments are more precise, and you get access to features designed to cut costs without sacrificing efficiency. 

 

1. They eliminate print servers (and printers) from your environment

The costs of maintaining, licensing, upgrading, and powering print servers stacks up over time. You’re not only dealing with expenses here, either. Countless hours are devoted to print servers just to keep printing afloat in organizations. Print server crashes lead to hours of damage control and employees are less productive when printing services are down. 

Print management services enable IT teams to remove print servers from their environment and consolidate management to a single platform. With a bird’s-eye-view of your print environment, you can identify which printers aren’t being utilized in your environment and remove them from your printer fleet. 

The removal of legacy infrastructure doesn’t just cut down your company’s electric bill. You experience long-term saving by removing tedious server maintenance and increasing end user productivity. 

 

2. They allow you to track costs

Users print every day. With hundreds, if not thousands, of users to manage you can imagine how tracking print jobs seems like a daunting task. And it is. Especially in decentralized print environments. 

Print management services allow you to determine the cost of each print job (color and greyscale), allowing you to calculate the precise dollar amount of paper and consumable usage. You can narrow your search down to users, devices, and groups to see where printing is being used the most (or the least) and determine which areas to develop stricter printing policies to cut costs.

Who knows? You may find that a few users don’t need printers anymore, allowing you to minimize your printer fleet even further. 

 

3. They promote sustainability (and security)

You’re probably calling our bluff on this one. But sustainability and security go hand-in-hand in modern print environments. By authenticating end users at the printer before they can receive their print jobs, you can cut down on paper waste, cancel accidental print jobs, and make sure print jobs aren’t left in the print tray. 

And users aren’t inconvenienced by the extra step, either. 

You and your team can choose the authentication method that works best for your end users. Print management services offer a few of the following release methods like badge release, entering a PIN at the control panel, web browser release, and QR code scanning. 

Most solutions don’t offer the full lineup of authentication methods mentioned above. For more info on Secure Release Printing (pull printing) click here. 

 

4. They enable you to limit print volumes

Some IT teams have a tighter budget to work with. Having the ability to limit print volumes by setting quotas for users or groups is critical to maintaining healthy print costs. 

A few ways Print Quota Management can help organizations on a budget:

  • Admins can set a maximum allowance on print jobs per user/group based on price or volume
  • Limit print jobs to a specific page count (i.e., users can’t print more than 10 pages per print job)
  • Assign print quotas by modes (i.e., color, greyscale, and duplex)
  • Set time delays between print jobs to reduce unintentional print jobs
  • Create recurring quota periods to reset every month, quarterly, or yearly

This feature set enables admins to identify which users and groups are printing the most, helping you determine how to allocate print volumes across your organization. Plus, you stop losing sleep over questionable 100-page color print jobs that have nothing to do with work. 

 

Start saving today with SaaS print management. 

Print management services provide ample ways to reduce the financial burden printing can have on your organization. Yet, few solutions offer a complete SaaS platform that unifies your entire print environment, eliminates your print servers, and promotes sustainability with its feature set like PrinterLogic does. 

What’s more, PrinterLogic is free for your first 30 days.

Schedule a demo today to learn more about serverless print management.   

What Are the Key Components of a Serverless Print Infrastructure?

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As IT professionals are looking to move away from legacy print solutions, the idea of a serverless print infrastructure is becoming more widespread. That’s true even in large enterprise organizations, where print servers have been an unnecessary evil for far too long.

A serverless print infrastructure brings more flexibility, greater scalability, and increased resiliency to the print environment. There are fewer moving parts without servers acting as single points of failure. 

There’s also less that can go wrong. 

But what features and functionality does a serverless print infrastructure have?

 

Key Components of a Serverless Print Infrastructure

Before we delve into what life after servers should look like, it’s important to answer: What is a serverless print infrastructure?

A serverless print infrastructure is cloud print management hosted under a SaaS solution or on-premises. Instead of relying on print servers for management, driver deployments, and other printing needs, serverless solutions leverage the cloud to unify print management for organizations and provide IT teams with increased oversight of print ecosystems from a single UI.

Below are some key components of a serverless print infrastructure to show you what you can expect when making the switch. 

 

Reduce print infrastructure

Implementing serverless printing means consolidating your entire print environment. All print servers in your organization become obsolete, and you can manage your locations on a single platform. This consolidation and oversight of your environment allows admins to weed out unnecessary printers in your fleet that aren’t being used. 

Serverless printing infrastructures are also more device agnostic, enabling you to utilize all of your company’s operating systems and devices while avoiding additional hardware purchases for compatibility purposes. 

 

Keep print jobs local

The WAN connection is the Achilles heel of traditional print solutions. If that connection is interrupted, printing is too. The speed of printing—along with all other Internet activity—can slow to a crawl if WAN traffic is heavy. 

The best way to increase print speeds for users is by removing the need to spool print jobs on a server and preserving network bandwidth. 

Serverless print infrastructures provide faster, more secure printing through a direct IP printing model. Print jobs are sent directly to the user workstation to the printer via direct IP and stay behind your company’s firewall on the local network. 

 

Native printer driver support

Lots of organizations have legacy printers that are fussy about drivers. They’ve also invested in current-gen hardware with advanced features that are only supported by native drivers. Supporting old hardware alongside the new is a big reason why those organizations are reluctant to eliminate their print servers.

Although you can use universal drivers if you prefer, a serverless infrastructure should have native driver support that lets you take advantage of your printers’ full range of features. Plus, you can manage, update and roll back printer drivers from a single user interface.

 

Next-gen integrations with apps and devices

Server-centric print environments lack integrations with modern-day solutions that power successful businesses. Even if they do integrate, the features are mediocre at best and don’t bring out the complete functionality of your devices. 

Serverless solutions should integrate with EMRs, ERPs, and VDIs to simplify printing in all complex environments. They should also work seamlessly with your identity providers (IdPs) so you can authenticate users before they have access to printing features. 

 

VPN-free printing

Some software print solutions make a big deal of being hosted on a cloud server. But these still require a VPN tunnel into your network, which limits accessibility. A robust, serverless print infrastructure should be accessible from any device with an Internet connection—no VPN required.

This is especially critical for hybrid employees who are always changing locations. They shouldn’t lose printing capabilities when they are off-network. Instead, any serverless option should offer ways to print securely on any network from any location.  

 

Print data and document security

Security is the watchword in enterprise circles. Moving to a serverless printing infrastructure means no longer losing sleep over PrintNightmare vulnerabilities. But there’s more to enhanced security beyond going serverless. 

The best print management solutions also present opportunities to leverage secure printing features like pull printing or Secure Release Printing, both of which require users to authenticate at the printer before receiving their print job. These features reduce the risk of losing critical documents after leaving them in the print tray and help maintain industry compliance standards. 

In terms of protecting your print data and ensuring your security needs are met, serverless solutions should be able to protect your data from end-to-end and should be constantly monitoring their security posture to remove future threats to your data.

Check out ISO 27001:2013-certified serverless print solutions here.  

 

Self-service printing 

Mobile employees need access to printers on the go. But in traditional print environments, these users inevitably call the helpdesk for assistance just to install printers. 

You can imagine how much of a headache this is for IT. Every time a user changes locations or needs a new printer, they get a call. 

Serverless printing should provide features like self-service printing, empowering your end users to install printers freely—without IT intervention. This cuts down on costs associated with helpdesk tickets and end-user wait times, boosting overall productivity and freeing up time for IT teams.

 

Automated, location-based deployments

Another component of a serverless print infrastructure is location-based deployments or proximity printing. This automated feature delivers printers instantly to users in the background based on their IP-address range. Automated deployments offer a streamlined way to give printers to users without requiring advanced scripts or GPOs.

Let’s consider a crew of traveling nurses going to and from branch hospitals for a second.

Time is always of the essence in healthcare settings. In a serverless print environment, admins can give nurses immediate access to printers in any networked location. So when a nurse takes out their device, they can simply choose the printer they want and print to it. This ensures faster printing and keeps jobs secure since they are kept on the local network (mentioned above). 

Automated, location-based deployments also greatly reduce helpdesk calls and allow admins to determine printer settings in bulk so end users don’t indulge in unnecessary color or single-sided printing.  

 

Try Serverless Printing Free with PrinterLogic

You’ve seen what a serverless print infrastructure can do for users, your IT team, and your organization, so why not experience it for yourself?

PrinterLogic unifies printing for all your locations on a single SaaS platform. Our centralized, direct IP approach to print management streamlines deployments, empowers users to install printers themselves, and offers the integrations and feature sets needed to secure your data. 

Try a no-risk, 30-day free trial of serverless printing today.

Serverless Printing Infrastructure Advantages

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“Serverless printing.” 

No, we’re not talking about an off-the-shelf printer connected to a USB cable or a couple of Wi-Fi-connected printers in a tiny office. 

Although both of these scenarios are technically serverless, they aren’t built to meet the goals of organizations trying to grow. In an enterprise, where the scale and complexity of the print environment is significantly greater, it’s hard to imagine ditching print servers to manage 50-plus printers.

However, if done right, serverless printing offers advantages that go far beyond just eliminating print servers.

 

What is serverless printing?

Serverless printing means no longer relying on print server architecture to handle your printing processes and management. Instead of jobs rendering in a print spooler, jobs are sent from the workstation directly to a networked printer. All print management tasks are handled on a centralized platform, print jobs stay local, and any concerns around server security vulnerabilities are removed as well. 

Serverless printing is designed to fit the needs of growing organizations and allows IT to adapt to unexpected changes that would derail traditional print infrastructure. It’s also the best solution for companies that are:

  • Reducing legacy infrastructure
  • Moving to a remote/hybrid workforce
  • Experiencing security concerns
  • Unifying devices and locations
  • Cutting down on consumable usage
  • Adopting Zero Trust Network Architecture

These are just a few examples of steps companies are taking to future-proof their business. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how serverless printing solutions allow companies to take all these steps all at once. 

 

Advantages of Serverless Printing

Serverless printing pays immediate dividends from the moment of implementation. IT no longer has to provision, license, or maintain print servers. Contrary to the IT burden servers cause, serverless printing offers the tools IT teams need to effectively “set it and forget it.” 

Plus, there are additional advantages of serverless printing that streamline IT print management:

 

Serverless printing eliminates all your print servers.

Going serverless means eliminating all of your print servers and replacing them with a cloud solution so you can manage company-wide print activity from a central location. 

The returns are evident from the get-go. 

No more PrintNightmare or single point of failure. Server crashes, spooler hangs, and other downtime vulnerabilities that impact print availability go away. Data-heavy print jobs no longer have to travel across the WAN to and from a datacenter or a consolidated server. Plus, you reduce infrastructure, increasing productivity across your company.

 

Serverless printing gives your hybrid users mobile printing capabilities.

In this case, mobile printing means printing on-the-go, regardless of location.

End users moving between offices can gain instant access to network printers in your cloud based on their location. Serverless solutions allow admins to either set up automated deployments based on IP address range or empower users to install printers themselves without requiring elevated privileges. 

Serverless solutions also offer off-network printing capabilities, enabling users to print to any networked printer from anywhere and keeping jobs encrypted behind your company’s firewall. This functionality discourages users to print from home and keep confidential print data secure—without tapping into costly VPNs.

 

Serverless printing increases your print security. 

Eliminating your print servers already offers a significant security boost; however, the security benefits of serverless printing extend much further than servers. In particular, going serverless prevents document theft and provides automated security updates. 

Document theft is a risky business. But it can be done easily by leaving documents unsecured in the print tray. Serverless printing removes that risk by providing secure printing features that enable end users to hold print jobs on their workstations until they authenticate at a designated network printer. Popular authentication methods include badge swipe, control panel application, or mobile app release.

Serverless solutions also roll out automatic updates hundreds of times per day to fill in any existing security gaps in your print environment. This takes the pressure off of admins to apply patches manually just to keep attackers out. 

 

Serverless printing consolidates your print management.

Whether you have one or 100 printers, serverless printing provides a way to centrally manage all of your users and devices on a single platform. 

What does this do for admins?

Print-related requests can be addressed quicker. Deployments can be done in just a few clicks—without GPOs and scripts. And you can delete or add printers and users with ease. 

This is awesome for IT. But users benefit just as much.

Users get printers faster, printer uptime increases, and they stop calling the helpdesk to add or install printers. Serverless printing solutions are also more device-agnostic than traditional print environments, meaning users can utilize any networked devices to print regardless of operating system or printer manufacturer. 

 

Serverless printing creates eco-friendly habits through cost-efficient printing.

Sustainability and savings go hand-in-hand with serverless printing. This is possible through tracking print jobs and setting print quotas. 

Serverless solutions unify your entire print environment, providing insights into print jobs by user, device, and department. This allows you to calculate costs per print job and generate reports to see where your organization could be saving money. You can also manage printer settings in bulk, such as ensuring users are printing with duplex settings and only using color ink when necessary.

To stay within budget and create more intentional printing habits, you can also set print quotas by volume or price. This keeps printing costs down and promotes sustainability throughout your organization.

Learn more about how serverless printing promotes eco-friendly habits here.  

 

Serverless printing drives Zero Trust adoption.

Users in Zero Trust environments are essentially guilty until proven innocent. They’re required to authenticate and are continuously validated before gaining access to necessary applications. 

With serverless printing solutions, you can reduce legacy infrastructure, receive constant security updates, and authenticate end users throughout the printing process to prevent data theft. Going serverless makes it easier to adopt Zero Trust, allowing you to:

 

Minimize Attack Surfaces: Removing legacy infrastructure like print servers minimizes your company’s chances of being breached.

Protect Confidential Data: Keeping print jobs local and implementing secure printing features ensures documents and data stay in the right hands.

Authenticate End Users: Requiring end users to verify their identity before they can print keeps out internal attackers.

Defend Against Attacks: Receiving automated security updates allows you to verify that your devices and data are fully protected.

Support Hybrid Workforces: Allowing hybrid workers to print securely to network printers when they are outside the company network keeps work moving. 

 

Try serverless printing for free. 

These advantages highlight just how serverless, centrally managed printing is actually far better suited for today’s enterprise environments than print servers. By implementing serverless printing, Cott, a massive beverage corporation with global reach, was able to eliminate more than 50 remote print servers, dramatically reduce the time and resources the company was devoting to print management and establish a scalable print environment for future growth.

The good news is you can go serverless too. 

PrinterLogic is a cloud-native, direct IP print management platform that centralizes your print environment by eliminating your print servers. We offer a complete SaaS platform that streamlines print management and empowers end users to install their own printers, helping to reduce helpdesk calls by up to 95%.

Get your free 30-day trial so you can experience serverless printing for yourself. 

Click here to get started.

The Challenges of Enterprise Secure Printing

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Many moving parts define secure printing. But the key component of secure printing requires end users to take an extra step or two before they print, making it an ongoing challenge to implement.

This brings up two questions: 

What challenges do IT teams face when implementing secure printing?

and

Does secure printing inconvenience end users?

Let’s answer both.

The biggest challenges of enterprise secure printing

The purpose of secure printing is to keep all printed documents out of the print tray and prevent information theft. It’s a priority for many data-sensitive sectors, however, new workforce trends and legacy devices pose challenges that make it hard to implement.

Challenge #1: End users have to memorize yet another password. 

By now, most users know that complex alphanumeric passwords prevent unauthorized access to their devices. Yet many of them choose obvious words or phrases for their password (like “password!”) because they’re easy to remember and enter—making them almost as vulnerable as having no password at all. 

It’s difficult asking users not only to remember an extra password but to log into their computer and authenticate via your company identity provider. 

Asking them to memorize another password to release a print job—is borderline torture.

Challenge #2: Simplifying secure printing for your mobile users 

It wouldn’t be farfetched to assume that most of your users are probably roaming somewhere in your organization. They need to be able to print on the move. 

In many cases, they have to call the helpdesk to get a printer installed. This turns secure printing into a four-step process when it should only take two. Here’s what secure printing looks like from the viewpoint of a user:

Call the helpdesk→Wait for the printer to be installed→Send print job to printer→Release print job

Although this does enable them to print securely, it doesn’t streamline the printing process. Secure printing for mobile users should be as easy as “Click print and release.”

Challenge #3: Extending secure printing to off-network users 

Unsecured home office printers are considered printing enemy number one for most admins. 

Why?

Users can print sensitive documents to a printer on an unsecured network. That data sits on the printer, waiting for hackers to steal it. Plus, print jobs go untracked, leaving admins in the dark about who, when, and where of documents. Organizations usually counter home office printing with expensive VPNs or urge users to connect the printer to the workstation via a USB—both of which require hours of babysitting by admins.

Remote employees and contingent workers who operate off-network need a way to print securely to networked printers in your organization from their home office or other off-site locations. This eliminates risky home office printing and allows users to pick up their jobs when they visit the office. 

Challenge #4: Finding 100% printer-compatible solutions

If you have a homogenous printer fleet, good on you. 

But this isn’t the case for most organizations that employ a mix of MFDs and legacy printers from different manufacturers. 

It’s difficult to find a solution that allows you to utilize any of your printers for secure release and saves you the time and money of buying a whole new fleet. Another worry is deciding which authentication method fits your environment and end users. You may discover that users prefer using badge release to authenticate instead of entering a PIN on the control panel or enjoy scanning a QR code to release their print jobs. 

Either way, these are decisions you and your organization have to make. The ideal solution would be a printer-agnostic platform that allows for all authentication methods, but those are few and far between. 

Does secure printing cause problems for end users?

No. At least, it shouldn’t. 

We discussed a few pain points for secure printing like memorizing more passwords and calling the helpdesk to install printers. However, these can easily be averted by choosing a solution with the right tools. 

Even if end users do feel inconvenienced by a small change, the returns are rewarding and worth conveying:

  • Users’ environmental impact will decrease with more intentional printing.
  • Users can cancel print jobs before they are printed at any time. 
  • Employee and customer data are protected with every print job.
  • Users can release print jobs in bulk instead of making multiple trips to the printer.

You’d be surprised. Users may be happy to learn that their newly developed printing habits are making a difference at the workplace—and not at the cost of productivity.

Make enterprise secure printing an easy addition.

PrinterLogic’s serverless print management solution allows you to centrally manage your print environment from a single user interface. 

Our version of secure printing, Secure Release Printing, requires users to authenticate via one of these convenient methods:

Mobile QR Code: Users can scan a QR code on the printer with their mobile device to release held print jobs.

Web browser: Users can utilize any device capable of running a browser—PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, and even mobile devices—to access PrinterLogic’s web-based app and release their print jobs.

A badge/card reader: If your workplace uses a badge system, you can situate a badge reader next to the printer or use your printer’s preinstalled readers. Employees can then release their print jobs on any printer associated with their badge.

Control Panel: Provided the printer is compatible, the dedicated PrinterLogic app can be installed directly on the printer itself. Users can then log in using the printer’s LCD screen and release their print jobs. No additional hardware is required.

For mobile employees traveling between offices, our Self-Service Installation Portal empowers users to install their printers without calling the helpdesk, giving them instant access to printers and increasing productivity.

Secure Release Printing also extends to your remote users, allowing them to print off-network to any networked printer and release them when they get to the office.

All-in-all, PrinterLogic makes enterprise secure printing so easy that end users will have no reservations about using it. 

Try secure printing free for 30 days. 

Or check out our Secure Release Printing white paper to learn more.

Print Servers Not Working? Eliminate Them!

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Horror stories surrounding print servers are all too common. In fact, before PrintNightmare flooded the tabloids, you’d hear about disappearing “ghost” printers, spooler crashes caused by heavy print traffic, and, of course, plans to add more servers to distribute workloads. 

The list of potential print server issues is as long as a high-volume print queue. 

You’ll see what issues we mean in the sections below. 

 

What’s the REAL problem with print servers?

Print server issues tend to be wide-ranging and recurrent. Permanent fixes for printing issues are few and far between, and the smallest problems can lead to a cascade of events that affect IT and end-user productivity. Take this basic occurrence for example:

  1. You deploy a printer to a user.
  2. The user clicks “print” and nothing happens.
  3. Frustrated, the user calls the helpdesk for help.
  4. The user waits around until they can print.
  5. IT arrives and devotes time to solving the issue, only to discover it was a botched printer installation. 
  6. Rinse and repeat.

The more users and printers you have only add to your workload. This is exactly how a tiny print server mishap can spiral out of control. Depending on how severe, several minutes or hours can pass by before printing is able to continue, and in cases of corrupted drivers or print queues, the problem might affect other users in the meantime, which, you guessed it, translates into more calls to the helpdesk. 

print cycle

It’s time to let print servers go. 

It starts with the single point of failure. 

Print server crashes cause printing to come to a screeching halt. Productivity decreases, panic ensues, and you’d think the whole organization is on the brink of a catastrophe. 

Having more than one print server doesn’t mean the issues stop, either. More servers increase the need for more resources and labor to maintain them. Plus, admins forfeit centralized control making it harder to track print jobs, keep costs down, and deploy printers to correct users. 

 

The IT workload is overbearing.

In terms of workload for IT teams, there’s server maintenance, licensing, and replacements. And, depending on the size of an organization, servers may require around-the-clock babysitting to ensure printing stays afloat. Printer deployments are becoming more complex as businesses expand, open new locations, and adopt mobile and dynamic work environments. 

In traditional print environments, users don’t have the ability or resources to install their own printers, resulting in calls to the helpdesk just to gain access to printers. In truth, most print-related requests would disappear just by empowering users to handle their own printing needs.  

 

Security issues are a concern.

PrintNightmare was a wake-up call for organizations. Admins felt the brunt of it with security patches and strict deployment methods taking over.

We could just stop here on our security rant. But, we won’t.

Hybrid work has brought another headache to print security: home printers.

Employees are printing confidential documents from home more than ever and, if printed on an unsecured network, the data and information from those print jobs can be swiped by cyber attackers. Plus, a lot of these jobs go untracked by IT. The only way to limit the security risks is to ask users to connect their home printers to their computers via a USB cord or use expensive VPNs.

And then there are unattended print jobs. 

Although sometimes unintentional, many print jobs are accidentally picked up by other users, improperly disposed of, or just sit in the open for too long. This critical customer and company information can be used with malicious intent by internal actors for financial gain or competitive advantage—both of which are detrimental to an organization. 

 

Print servers affect your company’s bottom line.

Printing costs companies up to 3% of their total yearly revenue. 

It doesn’t seem like much, but a company that makes $20 million is projected to spend $600,000 on printing alone. And these costs are untraceable in traditional print environments—especially under a decentralized management model. 

print cycle

Wasted paper and ink caused by unnecessary print jobs, failure to print in duplex, and printing personal documents at work are all reasons companies spend too much on printing. However, many of these issues can be circumvented by gaining more insight into print activity across your organization.

Plus, in distributed print management models, your organization is on the hook for licensing, maintenance, and replacement costs for each server you have. Quocirca estimates a single print server costs organizations up to $5000 per year. 

Depending on how many print servers you have, you save a lot of money by eliminating them. 

 

What do you gain by eliminating your print servers?

Faster printing, less printer maintenance, and increased oversight to name a few. But you’ll immediately notice the aforementioned issues with servers and traditional print architecture go away when you eliminate your print servers and move to cloud print management. 

print cycle

Centralized management: Cloud print management solutions unify your distributed print environment allowing you to see and manage all printers and users in your organization from a single console. Support native drivers from any printer manufacturer in a single repository. 

print cycle

Boosted security: Eliminating print servers enables you to reduce infrastructure along with them, minimizing attack surfaces and removing PrintNightmare concerns. Take advantage of next-gen IdP integrations to authenticate users before they print.  

print cycle

Fewer helpdesk tickets: No more spooler crashes or print-related helpdesk calls to install printers. Cloud print solutions empower users to install their own printers—without requiring elevated rights. 

print cycle

Easier deployments: Set up customized deployment criteria from a centralized console and deploy printers in just a few clicks—without scripts or GPOs. Automatically deploy printers based on IP address range to deliver them to users on the go. 

print cycle

Cost-efficient printing: Cloud print management allows you to keep tabs on print costs per print job, user, machine, and department. Leverage features like Print Quota Management and Secure Printing to make printing more intentional and cut down on consumable usage.

print cycle

Hybrid-friendly features: Mobile employees gain access to printers automatically when moving between floors and office buildings. Put an end to home office printing concerns by giving hybrid users the ability to print securely off-network.

 

Print servers not working for you?
Eliminate them. 

As much hassle as print servers are, as much time and money as they waste, it’s a head-scratcher that organizations keep going back to them like they’re the only game in town. 

There are superior alternatives out there. But few deliver a full SaaS experience that requires zero on-prem architecture, is ISO 27001:2013 certified, and addresses the most prominent pain points of traditional print management. 

So the next time a print server crashes, fails to show all associated printers, or just stops working altogether, remember you don’t have to continue down the same path. 

PrinterLogic can help you.

Our centralized, direct IP approach to print management allows organizations of any size, sector, or structure to eliminate print servers completely while enjoying increased uptime and advanced features like secure printing that drive sustainability—even in tricky virtual environments where VMware or Citrix printing is a must. 

Get a free 30-day trial to experience serverless printing today. 

Chromebook Printing Advantages with PrinterLogic

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For about 10 years now, the popularity of Chromebooks has seen a steady increase—not just in the K-12 educational sector (although they have been pretty dominant there) but also in workplaces where Chromebooks’ unique mix of affordability, easy management, and ultra-portability checks all the right boxes. 

Yet, despite all their benefits, Chromebook printing is one of the issues that led to hiccups in their adoption. A minimalist, cloud-centric operating system like ChromeOS just wasn’t designed for most printers and traditional enterprise printing solutions.

Life after Google Cloud Print

Many moons ago, organizations turned to solutions like Google Cloud Print to act as middleware between their existing print infrastructure and their Chromebooks. 

And with reason. 

It met their basic printing needs, but it wasn’t equipped to meet enterprise-level demands. After its deprecation in January 2021, organizations were left without a solution to their Chromebook printing problems. However, this motivated software companies to engineer their own Chromebook printing solutions that cater to larger corporations.

With an abundance of solutions at your fingertips, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. But few offer a true SaaS enterprise print management solution that changes the way Chromebooks interact with your printer fleet and simplifies the end user experience at the same time.  

How PrinterLogic simplifies Chromebook printing

Unlike many conventional enterprise printing solutions, PrinterLogic prioritizes seamless integration and flexibility of deployment over commandeering functionality. This means it acts as a crucial enhancement to Chromebook printing rather than a straight-up alternative to Google Cloud Print—although it’s certainly powerful and full-featured enough to be implemented in that way too.

As you’d expect from a next-generation Chromebook printing solution, there’s no client-side software or printer-side software to install. 

That means Chromebook users can open a machine for the very first time and start printing to an authorized printer right away without resorting to calling the helpdesk.

Plus, PrinterLogic supports any network printer—including legacy devices—removing the need to buy new printers or specific models that are Google Cloud Print-compatible. You can designate any network printer for Chromebook printing with an ease of configuration that is simply unprecedented in print management.

Secure printing features with Chromebooks

Alongside this ease of administration and use, PrinterLogic provides admins with a degree of centralized oversight and control that legacy printing solutions can’t match. 

For example, using PrinterLogic’s centralized console, you can specify which printers users can print to—yet you can do so without resorting to the Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and scripts that you’ve traditionally been forced to rely on. Deployments take just a few clicks.

PrinterLogic’s optional Secure Release Printing method also adds a security aspect to Chromebook printing. When Chromebook users print, their print job is held until they specifically choose to execute it on their desired printer. In addition to being more convenient for highly mobile Chromebook users who rarely print to the same printer twice, this keeps jobs from being left exposed in the output tray—one of the leading causes of internal theft. 

Another option that plays into secure printing is the ability to automatically delete jobs that were not released using this method. You can simply set specific time periods (i.e. every 24 hours, every week, etc.) to delete print jobs being held in queue. 

Increasing print availability for Chromebooks

If PrinterLogic stopped at increased ease of management and enhanced secure printing capabilities, that might be enough for some organizations. But our on-prem and cloud-native enterprise printing solutions also ensure a highly available printing infrastructure that can withstand enterprise-scale challenges. 

In a nutshell, when your users are ready to print, your print infrastructure is too.

With that in mind, we have two Chromebook-related white papers that are worth a read. 

This one focuses on K-12 environments but has useful information on print-server bottlenecks and other Chromebook-printing issues that apply to enterprise environments. 

And this one examines Chromebook printing more generally. It highlights the compromises demanded by conventional enterprise printing solutions that can negate the benefits of Chromebook deployments—and how PrinterLogic can help.

Or maybe you’re a hands-on type of person. 

We get that. 

Rather than hearing about our enterprise Chromebook printing solution, you can just try it out in your environment.

Get PrinterLogic and its complete feature set free for 30 days.

How to Deploy Printers Without a Print Server

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Print servers are so widespread in the enterprise and such a common part of print infrastructure that it may seem like there are no other options when it comes to print management. 

And yet, if you were to ask admins who deal with print servers on a regular basis, they would have very little good to say about them. Print servers are notorious for being finicky, error prone, and high maintenance—an admin’s foe rather than a friend. 

There has to be a viable alternative to deploy printers without Windows print servers, right?

There is, and it can be done without scripts and GPOs too. 

How to set up deployments without print servers

Unreliable GPO-based deployments and workarounds following PrintNightmare were the last straw. You no longer want to deal with print servers because of security issues and deployment complexities. All you need to know are the next steps.

Step 1: Look into direct IP printing.

We’re not talking about installing all your printers to workstations manually as direct IP printers. That would take too much time. And although it eliminates the need for servers, management would get out of hand real quick. 

What I’m describing is a solution that installs a client on each workstation and keeps the communication between the workstation and printer. There’s no print spooling involved and jobs stay on the local network.

In short, direct IP printing is the way you can truly deploy printers without servers. And there are ways to centrally-manage direct IP printing in the cloud (which we will cover later).

Step 2: Move your print management to the cloud.

Not to make it sound easy. 

Moving to cloud print management takes a lot of work. There’s planning involved, pricing needs to be right, and security requirements need to be met before you can pull the trigger. But the hardest part is finding a solution that does what you need it to do. 

Here are a few questions you can ask cloud print management solutions to ensure they are a perfect match:

  • Does your solution completely eliminate print servers?
  • Do all printer settings and configurations stay intact during migration?
  • Is the user interface easy to learn?
  • Is your solution direct IP?
  • Do you offer a free proof-of-concept?

Depending on your unique requirements, you may need to ask more questions to narrow down your list of potential solutions. 

And that’s okay. 

But remember, the goal is to get rid of servers and replace GPO-based deployments with a more streamlined method.

Step 3: Consolidate your locations on one platform.

Many IT teams are tasked with managing both main and remote office printing. In distributed print environments with print servers, deployments increase in complexity since admins no longer have centralized control.

Having the ability to pull all of your printers, printer drivers, and their settings from your print servers via Active Directory enables you to see every aspect of your print environment from a single user interface. 

This centralized approach to management put your printer drivers in a single repository, making it easy to add, remove, and replace them with ease. Plus, it ensures that the right printers get to the right users reliably and consistently without scripts and GPOs. All you have to do is tick a few boxes.

So you’ve got your printers, printer drivers, and users in one location. What’s next?

Step 4: Configure printer default settings.

This isn’t a requirement for better deployments, but it will save you time and money down the road. 

Consider these wasteful printing habits:

  • A certain department regularly prints in color unnecessarily.
  • Users print single-sided instead of duplex. 
  • Employees don’t look at printer settings at all before printing.

Configuring default printer settings ensure that each time a user changes settings for a print job, the print settings automatically revert back to the settings you created. To help fit the unique needs of certain employees or departments, you can customize settings by printers individually as well.

Finally, it’s time to pick your deployment method. 

Step 5: Choose how you want to deploy printers.

Now that you’ve unified your print management, given your users direct IP printing through eliminating your print servers, and have your drivers in a single repository, it’s time to deploy and enjoy. 

Depending on how much control you need over deployments, you have a few different options:

Deploy by IP-address range: If you have roaming employees regularly moving between office buildings and departments, setting up automatic deployments based on IP address delivers printers to end users instantly. This allows you to set deployments on autopilot and boosts end user productivity.  

Leverage self-service printing: Empower end users to install their own printers without calling on IT. Similar to automatic IP range deployments, users can instead choose the printer they need from a drop-down list or floor plan map to identify available printers and install them. No deployments are required from the admin. 

Set granular deployment criteria: Get more specific with your deployments. Deploy printers to just a few users, create group-specific deployment criteria, and set a default printer on a one-time basis to make sure users only have access to the printers they need. 

The quickest way to deploy printers without print servers.

You’ve seen how it is possible to deploy printers without servers in a few easy steps. The hardest part of the journey is actually finding a centralized, direct IP print management solution that helps you get there.

PrinterLogic can help.

Offering a host of easy and alternate ways to deploy printers, PrinterLogic integrates with Active Directory (AD), so you can use criteria such as containers, users, computers, organizational units (OUs) and even IP address ranges to automatically and dynamically deploy printers to your users. 

It also slots in smoothly alongside virtual solutions like Citrix and VMware, making printer deployment practically effortless in those customarily complex environments. And because PrinterLogic doesn’t rely on GPOs, support staff with lower-level privileges can still safely deploy printers to select users. 

Want to test out serverless deployments?

Get a free 30-day trial of PrinterLogic today.