5 Reasons to Adopt SaaS Print Management
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market has exploded in recent years, with the majority of businesses adopting some form of SaaS in their business processes. And this growth is only expected to continue: it’s estimated the SaaS market will increase by 7.33% each year and be worth nearly $375 billion by 2028.
There are many reasons the SaaS market is booming; these services enhance efficiency and reduce costs. Benefits like these can easily be brought to your print management strategy by moving your operations to the cloud.
Below, we’ll delve into the top five reasons why you should adopt SaaS print management and how making the switch will benefit your business.
1. Optimized Print Security
Cyberattacks have drastically increased over the last few years, with cybersecurity events happening every few seconds. According to Security Magazine, 79% of organizations expect some sort of cyberattack (such as ransomware attacks) to occur. Additionally, 61% of large organizations have reportedly experienced at least one print-related data breach due to insecure printing practices in 2023.
Printing infrastructures on a cloud platform address these concerns by maintaining top-notch security through automated patches and updates as well as robust security features. Some of these features include advanced encryption protocols, customizable user roles and authentication, and secure printing options like pull printing.
2. Increased Business Agility
One of the biggest advantages of SaaS print management is the ability to scale on demand. Opening up a new office? Set up your print infrastructure in minutes. Moving, adding, or changing printers? Give end users access on the fly without worrying about helpdesk tickets. With more business agility, you can easily adjust to changing needs—whether that’s a sudden increase in printing demands or needing to downsize operations and infrastructure.
3. Do More, With Less Hardware
Making the move to SaaS printing reduces your reliance on traditional printing hardware, which can help to alleviate strain on your business resources. For example, SaaS printing reduces the amount of hardware needed to print, helping your organization save money.
And we can’t forget the device-agnostic nature of SaaS solutions. Unlike legacy hardware, SaaS platforms allow you to make the most of the devices and Operating Systems you currently utilize in your environment without having to go out and buy a new fleet of printers or computers.
Additionally, SaaS printing solutions eliminate the need for extensive and expensive in-house infrastructure. Reducing infrastructure needs helps minimize the environmental impact associated with manufacturing, maintaining, and disposing of hardware components.
4. Improved Business Sustainability
Traditional printing methods are taking a toll on the environment. According to recent studies, over 375 million empty ink and toner cartridges are thrown away every year and take over 1,000 years to decompose. SaaS printing enables users to optimize print usage and reduce paper waste by leveraging features such as duplex printing, Secure Release Printing, and Print Quota Management.
5. No More Hidden Costs
Keeping business costs low is a high priority for most businesses. However, unexpected hardware failures, upgrades, or downtime can cost organizations up to $5,600 per minute. SaaS solutions, on the other hand, come at a fixed rate—whether it’s in packages, bundles, or per printer/print queue. If you know exactly how many printers are in your fleet, receive rolling automatic security updates, and eliminate the fear of unexpected failures, you’ll have a better idea of how much your preferred platform costs.
Bonus: Control Over Both Printing and Scanning
Many traditional print management solutions only cover printing needs. If you want scanning capabilities, you’ll likely have to pay extra or implement an entirely new solution. Many SaaS printing solutions come with built-in scanning functionality that allow you to track, manage, and store your digital scans wherever you need to. Scanning solutions standardize the scanning experience for end users and ensure that documents get to the email inbox or cloud storage location.
Enjoy the Benefits of SaaS Print Management
Ultimately, SaaS print management is a strategic business decision that brings your organization more than efficiency. SaaS printing boosts your security, enhances agility, lowers costs, and more.
As the business landscape continues to evolve and your needs change, it’s crucial to implement faster, smarter, and more flexible solutions wherever possible. SaaS print management is a great place to start.
PrinterLogic Virtual Appliance or SaaS? Analyzing Your Options After Web Stack End-of-Life
It’s been a minute since PrinterLogic Web Stack reached its end-of-life.
Since February 28, 2023, to be exact.
And if you’ve been holding onto the product for dear life, we understand—it’s a great product. However, we have alternatives that simplify print management and keep jobs on the local network while still giving you the control Web Stack provided.
Below, we’ll cover our on-premise and cloud-native solutions, how they enhance security, and the benefits of upgrading to our next-gen software.
What are your upgrade choices after Web Stack?
PrinterLogic offers two ways to manage print after migrating from Web Stack: PrinterLogic SaaS and the PrinterLogic Virtual Appliance (VA).
PrinterLogic SaaS is easy to manage, eliminates legacy infrastructure, scales on demand, and rolls out automatic updates to keep your data secure. Our SaaS platform is ISO 27001:2013- and SOC 2 Type 2-certified, which encompasses the protection of your confidential data and enables us to better satisfy your unique business requirements.
The PrinterLogic Virtual Appliance is our latest on-premise, self-contained solution for customers who want the latest functionality but who need to host the solution in their data center or private cloud. It’s a complete, unitized solution that’s ready to install, including a server OS, web services, network environment, and the PrinterLogic application.
What new features do you get access to?
Since we discontinued engineering support for Web Stack customers in August 2022, new features have been developed that aren’t accessible within Web Stack.
Extend and enhance your printing capabilities by migrating to our VA or SaaS solution:
- Simplified Scanning features that enhance document collaboration in hybrid environments (SaaS only, with Virtual Appliance support upcoming)
- Modernized and automated Output Management tools to ensure efficient document delivery
- Cloud-based Identity Provider support (e.g., Okta, Azure AD, and more)
- Chrome-OS Client Extension to manage Chromebooks like any other OS
- Printer-agnostic, intuitive Control Panel Application (CPA) that supports your print release, copy, and scanning capabilities
- Zero Trust-supported Off-Network Printing solution for hybrid workplaces
- Offline Secure Release Printing for Windows–close your laptop and still receive print jobs
- Native direct IP Mobile Printing on iOS and Android
- Secure Release Printing with touchless QR code using mobile devices, simple badge release, or from the CPA
How secure are the Virtual Appliance and SaaS solutions?
Like any on-prem solution, some facets of security are determined by your organization’s security policies. As a general rule, the Virtual Appliance is considered to be highly secure for several reasons:
- The VA’s low-profile operating environment is less exposed as an attack surface
- The OS and platform elements are updated regularly, reducing vulnerabilities
- VAs offer content verification and integrity checking based on public-key cryptography
There are a couple other security benefits worth mentioning. First, your database and file storage locations are controlled by you, so you can apply your own security policies. Second, the latest PrinterLogic platforms use centrally managed direct IP, so by default, all print job data stays on the local network.
Our SaaS solution is ISO 27001:2013- and SOC 2 Type 2-compliant and offers the same security features and benefits as our VA offering. All communication between workstation clients and the AWS-hosted PrinterLogic SaaS instance is encrypted over HTTPS and TLS 443 with an OAuth2 security token. PrinterLogic SaaS utilizes the security features of Amazon Web Services and Azure Cloud to ensure that PrinterLogic systems and data are secure.
PrinterLogic SaaS integrates with one or more IdP services to authenticate and authorize users, groups, and computers. Confidential data is also protected through a choice of secure pull-printing capabilities, which are included in the core license.
What is the process for upgrading to PrinterLogic SaaS?
You’ll receive full support from our team to migrate from Web Stack. In five simple steps, you’ll have PrinterLogic SaaS and additional features up and running.
- We’ll ensure you’re using the latest Web Stack software (v19.1.1.13 SP3 and MySQL 8.0 or later)
- After spinning up your SaaS instance, you’ll upload your database to a secure location using a URL we provide
- Transfer settings from your database (e.g., config options, printers, and users) to your SaaS instance
- Build a script that removes, then reinstalls, our current client software on all user endpoints
- Reinstall all Control Panel Applications if you’re using our CPAs
What about upgrading to the Virtual Appliance?
As a starting point, you need to be running Web Stack v19.1 SP3 with MySQL 8.0 or later. The VA includes an upgrade tool that allows you to migrate data into the VA from your Web Stack instance. You can do a migration on your own or reach out to Product Support for assistance.
This upgrade does not overwrite your existing Web Stack install, which allows you to spin up the VA and test it before you cut over to the new solution. We recommend uninstalling your CPAs from Web Stack before doing the migration and then reinstalling the latest CPAs from the VA once it’s up and running.
Interested in upgrading from PrinterLogic Web Stack?
As we complete our transition to a complete SaaS-first company, we invite all of our current Web Stack users to increase security and enjoy all the features and functionality provided by our Virtual Appliance and SaaS print management solutions.
If you’re a current customer and would like to discuss your upgrade options, reach out to your PrinterLogic representative.
For more details about PrinterLogic Web Stack End-of-Life, check out our FAQ.
Best Practices When Implementing Centralized Print Management in an Enterprise
It’s easier to keep track of things when they’re all in one place. That’s why centralized print management is such an important goal for IT teams. However, it can take a lot of work to implement in large organizations with many moving parts like different operating systems, printer models, locations, and user needs.
It’s even more challenging when your infrastructure is working against you.
Print servers and other prototypical corporate printing solutions don’t allow you to view and manage everything from a single pane of glass. Instead of unifying the print environment, they fragment it.
However, with the right resources, centralized print management is more than just possible—it’s easy to implement. And the long-term payoff can be huge if done correctly. Read on to learn the best practices to implement centralized print management.
Eliminate your print servers
More infrastructure doesn’t equal more features and more convenience. This assumption is one of the most common mistakes in print management. It is also one of the leading reasons organizations end up adding print servers when their print environment is underperforming. Which, in turn, only creates more hardware to juggle and increases overall costs.
And, after the PrintNightmare scare, admins wished they had eliminated print servers instead of adding to their fleet.
Serverless printing infrastructure empowers you to ditch your print servers. That’s because it uses direct IP, which creates one-to-one connections between computers and printers without servers. At the same time, it helps bring the entire print environment together. All of those client/printer relationships are housed under one solution and managed from a single console.
Simplify printer deployments and driver maintenance with a single console
If your organization is after centralized print management, chances are you’re looking for a more streamlined print experience for admins and end users. Centralized print management gets you one step closer to simplifying deployments by providing a single console that allows you to deploy printers with just a few clicks and manage your printer drivers from a single repository.
Admins can add new printers or make changes to existing ones effortlessly. They can even use Active Directory criteria to set up advanced deployments. On the other hand, end users can leverage Self-Service Printer Installation features to install printers by themselves—drastically reducing helpdesk intervention.
Find a scalable solution
When you think of traditional direct IP printing, the term “scalable” doesn’t usually come to mind. But server-based corporate printing solutions aren’t very scalable either. To scale up, they always call for more infrastructure. Otherwise, performance goes downhill.
A serverless printing infrastructure enables print environments to become incredibly scalable. Even ones that are growing. If you open or acquire a new location, you can import its printers automatically. There is no need to airdrop another print server to service a new office.
Prioritize print security
Protecting your printers has become as commonplace as locking your door before you leave the house. It’s more than necessary. And you don’t want your property to get stolen.
So, how do you keep threats out of your print environment?
It’s simple. Require your users to have a key (password) to be allowed inside.
When you eliminate your print servers and move to cloud printing, you open the door to integrations with IdPs, which mandate users to verify their identity before giving them access to necessary applications—including printing. On top of that, serverless print management offers advanced security features like pull printing, requiring a second layer of authentication before print jobs are released.
Consider your sustainability goals
Businesses are doing all they can to create a more sustainable workplace, not just in terms of future growth, but also making an intentional effort to lower consumable usage to help the environment. Printing is, of course, a great place to start.
Centralizing your print environment by eliminating your print servers does wonders for your sustainability initiatives in a few ways, including:
- Reducing the amount of electricity used by print servers
- Removing unused printers from your print fleet
- Providing features like pull printing to create intentional printing habits
- Setting limits on maximum print job size to cut back on paper usage
- Tracking and auditing print jobs to calculate print costs per user, group, and department
And these are just the basics.
Sure, you could just ask people to print less, restrict access to most printers, and cross your fingers that they’ll print duplex. However, serverless printing gives you control over what end users can do and provides the features and functionality to make sustainable printing almost automatic.
Get proven results with SaaS print management
Moving to a serverless print management solution allows admins to eliminate print servers and get centralized print management on a single platform.
Take our customer, Aquafin, for example.
This large Belgian wastewater specialist first went from hundreds of Novell IP printers to four Windows print servers. Then, it migrated again to PrinterLogic’s fully serverless printing infrastructure. At each step of the way, our solution helped Aquafin apply best practices and get optimal results. Read the case study here.
Large or small, your organization can do the same. Schedule a demo of PrinterLogic today and get a 30-day free trial to discover how quickly and seamlessly you can achieve centralized print management in your print environment.
Serverless Printing and the Modern Digital Workplace with AWS
Together with leaders from Amazon Web Services, we’ve examined what a modern print management solution looks like.
IT needs a solution that meets the demands of a modern digital workplace. Modern print management should support every OS and printer manufacturer. It should also support modern identity and access management technologies. If it checks those boxes, all while keeping printing on the local network, you’ve got a winner.
PrinterLogic’s AWS-hosted SaaS offering is a true SaaS solution. In this blog, we’ll cover:
- How PrinterLogic SaaS integrates with AWS to deliver modern serverless print management
- How the AWS Digital Workplace provides an ecosystem of secure and collaborative solutions
- How to support printing in Zero Trust environments and flexible workplaces
But first, let’s define and discuss the four tenets of a serverless printing infrastructure.
What is a serverless printing infrastructure?
Implementing a serverless printing infrastructure means eliminating print server architecture and utilizing a cloud-based solution to manage, track, and deploy printers. Along with eliminating print servers, serverless printing helps IT teams centralize their print environment, providing admins with a bird’s-eye view of all printer objects, drivers, and users across distributed office locations.
Companies are striving to remove infrastructure faster than ever before. According to Gartner, 75% of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model built in the cloud by 2026. And SaaS print management plays a vital role in any organization’s digital transformation. Moving from on-prem, physical resources to cloud-based solutions is critical to any digital workplace transformation.
The four tenets of a serverless printing infrastructure
So, what exactly are the requirements of a serverless printing infrastructure? PrinterLogic CTO Corey Ercanbrack maintains that there are four, which we’ll highlight and describe below.
A modern SaaS architecture
Implementing SaaS-based solutions removes the need for expensive VPNs. VPN failures create bottlenecks. Not to mention, legacy systems require constant IT intervention, including security patches and upgrades to keep your hardware up-to-date.
The immutability and microservices ingrained in SaaS solutions are critical components that allow for fully automated environmental scalability. These also prevent problematic breakdowns. These components, along with multi-tenancy, allow for speedy updates and delivery of services as they become available. Print jobs must stay local in the user domain, leveraging a direct IP protocol. In short, SaaS architectures encourage a better security posture and eliminate single points of failure.
IT infrastructure integrations
Ask more significant questions that take into account your IT roadmap as a whole. It’s bigger than users, printers, and print servers. It helps to think about WAN, BYOD, virtualization/DaaS, IdPs, and how to print across operating systems and multifunction printers.
Ask yourself, “What will my printing infrastructure look like years from now? And, what steps can I take to future-proof it?” Consider how your print environment will integrate with business analytics platforms and other business intelligence software to drive you toward a fully digital workplace.
User-based security
One important consideration should be the path of print data. Direct IP printing provides better security since print jobs are sent directly from the workstation to the printer.
Combining localized print jobs with Secure Release Printing and multi-factor authentication (MFA) features is integral to preventing print data loss. Open Identity Access Management dictates that the user is more important than the device. Auditable Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) allows for compliance and an improved security posture. These all align with existing infrastructure integrations.
Off-Network/Zero Trust printing
The fourth tenet of a serverless printing infrastructure is to keep print jobs local. With this in mind, consider other BYOD flexibility challenges. How can you deliver print functionality when the MFP in front of a user is on a different network? To access that service, you would need an external service available via a public internet connection and a local encrypted secure tunnel, creating hoops for IT to jump through just to maintain security.
Serverless printing should extend Zero Trust printing capabilities to hybrid employees by empowering them to print securely to any network printer, regardless of their location. Authorized off-network users simply verify their identities via IdP, access the SaaS application, and select the network printer they wish to print to. In this scenario, all jobs remain encrypted until they reach the desired printer. This eliminates the need to print confidential documents to unsecure home office printers.
Print management in the modern digital workplace
Now that we’ve defined the requirements of a serverless printing infrastructure, let’s look a little more closely at how AWS makes it possible.
The AWS Digital Workplace delivers an ecosystem of secure and collaborative solutions. Kristen Escobar, Global Segment Lead for Digital Workplace at AWS, explains why: “When we say ‘Digital Workplace’…We are talking about the technology and the services required to support the end user daily, allowing them to work securely from anywhere on any device.”
“Work anywhere on any device.”
This statement may be poignant for IT pros. As employees slowly return to the office, there’s more interest in dynamic workplace models like hoteling and hot desking, creating a demand for BYOD support. Those new models create new challenges for IT and possibly for those who show up late to the office.
What makes a modern digital workplace?
Technology users today are either consuming, creating, or manipulating content. They do this either individually or in collaboration with others. And it’s possible only with a device and an application.
The digital workplace defines the functions and mechanisms required to get the content to the user while enabling interactive collaboration and communication in a secure and accessible way.
When we look at developing a truly digital workplace, three key areas stand out:
- Endpoint management
- Application management
- Collaboration
The digital workplace identifies solutions that manage these components effortlessly. It provides a simple-to-use and practical remote work or remote learning environment.
It’s important to note that we are not looking at the business applications themselves. Instead, we are looking at the mechanisms by which these applications are delivered, managed, and secured for remote users.
The combination of these principles and control operations allows us to define the function of a product or service. AWS has made it easy for PrinterLogic to provision a very secure, brand-new instance of their software. In a matter of minutes, it allows a defined printer object to be silently deployed across all operating systems.
Better Together: PrinterLogic SaaS + AWS
Since the beginning, PrinterLogic has shouted from the mountaintops to “eliminate your print servers.” In 2016, that message got louder when PrinterLogic and AWS partnered together.
The goal? Deliver a true SaaS solution to enterprise printing.
Since then, PrinterLogic and AWS have combined forces to leverage the following technologies and deliver a seamless print management experience:
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Amazon Simple Queue Service is a fully managed message queuing service that helps you decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SQS removes the complexity and overhead of operating message-oriented middleware and empowers developers to focus on differentiating work.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon EC2 provides scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Using Amazon EC2 removes the need to invest in hardware upfront. This allows you to develop and deploy applications faster. You can use EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need. You can configure security, networking, and manage storage.
Amazon EC2 enables you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity. This flexibility means you can reduce your need to forecast traffic.
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud. It combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases. Amazon Aurora features a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales.
It delivers high performance and availability with these several features:
- Up to 15 low-latency read replicas
- Point-in-time recovery
- Continuous backup to Amazon S3
- Replication across three Availability Zones (AZs)
PrinterLogic and AWS add incredible reliability and continuous delivery for print management. PrinterLogic SaaS is built on microservices that customers don’t have to patch or upgrade. They can reap the benefits of the new service as it comes online.
With PrinterLogic’s platform leveraging these technologies, IT departments everywhere can celebrate. Gone are the days of hearing, “The print server is down, and we can’t print.”
With increased printer uptime and productivity, you might actually miss your end users a little bit.
Highly available print management built for the future
PrinterLogic, combined with the power of AWS, can help you take a big step toward digital transformation. You can say goodbye to legacy, on-prem infrastructure. A modern print management solution is possible with PrinterLogic SaaS and AWS.
PrinterLogic is available on the AWS marketplace and offers a 30-day, fully supported free trial of the software after trying a demo.
Request a free demo and 30-day trial of PrinterLogic SaaS today.