Serverless Pull Printing: Secure Printing Without a Print Server

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Pull printing has emerged as one of the most useful ways for organizations of all sizes to implement a secure printing protocol among their workforce—and for good reason. Sixty-one percent of organizations have experienced data loss due to unsecured printing. 

Not surprisingly, though, many organizations balk at the idea of having to deploy even more physical infrastructure to gain one piece of extra functionality. That’s why demand for serverless pull printing has increased.

Before we explore serverless pull printing in more detail, let’s pause briefly to look at what exactly secure pull printing is and why it’s beneficial.

 

What Is Secure Pull Printing?

Pull printing—sometimes referred to as secure pull printing or Secure Release Printing—turns the act of printing into an intentional two-step process. Broken down, it looks like this:

  1. The user initiates the print job– This is no different from how computer users have been printing for decades—they simply click “Print,” as usual. The job is then sent to the destination printer, where it’s held in the queue instead of being carried out immediately.
  2. The user allows the printer to execute the job– Once at the printer, the user engages an authentication mechanism, such as a badge or card reader. That authorizes the printer to start the associated pending job. The user then retrieves the job from the output tray once it’s finished.

It may be perceived that an extra step in the printing process would burden end users. However, adding the “release” step enables users to release print jobs in bulk and maintain document privacy which is sought after in high-confidentiality industries like healthcare, banking, and government.  

 

What Does Secure Pull Printing Help Organizations Achieve?

There are several benefits of secure pull printing that make an immediate impact on your organization.

Strengthened Security

By ensuring that the user is physically present before a job can begin, documents aren’t left sitting in the output tray for anyone to see—or steal. According to a report by the Ponemon Institute, 60% of organizations stated “accessing sensitive data not associated with role or function” as the reason for insider threats. This advantage of secure pull printing should be apparent to anyone in the healthcare or high-tech industries, where confidentiality is at a premium.

Sustainable Printing

Sustainability isn’t just a buzzword anymore. According to Quocirca, 70% of organizations say it is important their print supplier provides a range of sustainable products and services. Secure pull printing addresses eco-friendly initiatives by cutting down on consumable usage and preventing jobs from being abandoned. If a user spots a typo just after clicking “Print,” the previous job can easily be canceled before the final authorization step. In addition, admins can set unreleased print jobs to be deleted from a user’s virtual print queue after 24 hours. 

Flexibility 

Let’s say you want to print a meeting agenda on a distant conference room printer, but the room is currently in use. With secure pull printing, you can print your job at a different printer without disturbing the current meeting. Simply authenticate and execute the job at the nearest convenient printer.

Cost Reduction

Along with avoiding expensive insider document theft and data threats (which cost around $179K to contain), printing overall becomes a more intentional practice for users, ensuring they don’t print accidental duplicates of the same print job. Not to mention, these secure practices extend your printer life by minimizing accidental, high-volume print jobs.

There is one glaring negative about secure pull printing worth noting: many pull printing solutions require additional hardware, such as a dedicated print server that’s used exclusively to provide secure pull printing functionality. This is far from desirable, particularly in organizations that are trying to reduce infrastructure and costs by migrating to serverless printing.

 

Add Flexibility and Security to Your Print Environment

PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management solution was designed to provide serverless printing to any organization, and that naturally applies to its powerful but easy-to-implement Secure Release Printing as well. You can deploy it throughout your entire print environment—including those with legacy printers—without the need for any additional infrastructure. 

As a matter of fact, PrinterLogic enables you to eliminate print servers across the board to attain truly serverless printing that’s cost-effective, enterprise-ready, and cloud-native—even in VMware, Citrix, and IGEL environments.

You and your users gain flexibility too. Our Secure Release Printing feature gives you the choice of the following four release methods:

 

Mobile QR-Code Release: Scan a QR code at the printer using your mobile device to release a print job. This eliminates the need for additional infrastructure like badge readers. 

Secure Badge Release: Utilize a tethered or network-enabled badge or card reader that integrates with your existing ID system. 

Control Panel Application: Leverage PrinterLogic’s embedded control panel app for supported printers. 

Web Browser: Release jobs from any device with a browser, such as a PC, mobile phone, or a nearby tablet in kiosk mode.

 

And in each case, it bears repeating that no print server is needed.

There’s a lot to like about this secure printing feature, but there’s even more to like when it’s serverless, seamless, and intuitive. Book a demo and get a free 30-day trial today. 

5 Reasons to Adopt SaaS Print Management

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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.

Print Management Software Trends in 2024

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Print management software is a massive market, and it’s growing fast. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.4% for the next seven years, likely becoming a $6.3 billion market by 2031. As print management trends shift toward efficiency, security, and environmental responsibility, it’s easy to see the reasons behind such growth.

Here are some of the top print management software trends for 2024, and why they will be a differentiating factor for businesses. 

 

The Print Management Trends You Can Expect to See in 2024

Print management affects every aspect of a business and can have ripple effects through many departments, making the current trends a reflection of larger workplace trends. These are the top trends coming to print management in 2024:

 

Print management solutions with transparent sustainable printing capabilities

Customers are demanding more insight into the environmental impact of their print environment and print suppliers. About 70% of organizations say it’s important that their print supplier provides a range of sustainable products and services, and 69% think it’s important for print suppliers to show they are reducing their own environmental impact.

 

AI will make print management solutions more effective

As artificial intelligence continues revolutionizing technology, the print management market can also benefit. Print management software can implement AI solutions to reduce downtime, optimize print workflows, predict maintenance needs, and detect security breaches faster, among many other advantages.

 

Users will expect high availability, flexibility, and scalability in the cloud

Businesses are developing ways to become more agile while also reducing costs (both financial and environmental) compared to operating an on-premises environment. In addition to cutting costs and improving agility, cloud-first organizations are better prepared for advanced cyberattacks through optimized data compliance and security.

The shift to cloud-first solutions goes hand-in-hand with another trend: International business travel and in-person events are expected to increase in 2024. The growing amount of travel means that not only will people print more from work, but they’ll also print more from various off-site locations. If you plan to attend industry events while staying connected to work, you’ll need to be prepared with flexible and secure printing solutions.

 

Print security continues to become a higher priority

Print management solutions continue to boost their credentials when it comes to data protection and theft prevention. They do this by providing security features like pull printing and integrations with IdPs. Customers looking for secure printing should plan to leverage solutions that adhere to SOC or ISO security frameworks.

 

Return to office push = More printing

A whopping 90% of companies plan to implement return-to-office policies by the end of 2024. That means more people will be printing at the office, which costs more money to cover increased resource use. If your organization is moving employees back into the office, you may want to start looking for a solution that limits print volumes and keeps print costs in check.

 

Simple user experience will become a priority

Change is challenging. Implementing a print solution that doesn’t require users to jump through hoops is key. The learning curve for IT should be minimal as well. If your print management software has a better user experience, your employees are more likely to adopt the solution more quickly while maintaining or improving productivity.

 

Sustainability and eco-friendly printing will be non-negotiable 

Sustainability is a major factor driving printing trends, too. Print management is a key way to reduce paper waste and protect the environment; however, it’s just as important for the business. According to Brand Times, sustainability will be a key growth driver in 2024 because it will materially affect profit centers, stakeholder management, and market share.

As sustainability gains importance, print management software will incorporate more features to support environmentally responsible printing. This may include:

  • Eco-mode printing: Introducing further settings for reducing energy consumption.
  • Carbon footprint tracking: Tools that allow organizations to measure and reduce their carbon footprint.
  • Paperless initiatives: Integrating with document management systems to promote paperless workflows.

 

How PrinterLogic Prepares You for 2024 and Beyond

PrinterLogic is the key to future-proofing your print management for 2024 and beyond. Our solution simplifies your print infrastructure while reducing print tickets by 90%. Centralized management increases the security and efficiency of print jobs while still supporting flexible, scalable, and secure printing. And because PrinterLogic is a centralized cloud-native solution, you can access your critical print data from a single pane of glass so you can start printing less, saving money, increasing sustainability, and being more transparent with future customers. 

If you’re interested in accelerating automation and digitization and keeping up with print management trends, schedule a demo with us today.

Best Practices When Implementing Centralized Print Management in an Enterprise

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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.

Webinar Recap: Printonomics

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Remember your last math class? 

You thought none of it would apply to your future career, and then, low and behold, you’re managing hundreds of printers and sweating bullets trying to track print costs.

This is particularly true for IT teams with complex, distributed print environments where quantifying cost, efficiency, and consumable waste seems like advanced calculus. 

Luckily, we hosted a webinar called Printonomics to help IT pros like you identify the actual costs of printing and turn what was once a complex math equation into simple subtraction. 

Watch the recording below or read on for a quick event summary. 

 

 

Printing Is Costing You Money

Everything has a price. But when it comes to printing, it’s not just about the cost of consumables like paper and ink; it’s the hardware, loss of productivity, and security vulnerabilities that exponentially drive up costs. 

And, if you want to really point the finger, your print servers are the main culprit for higher print costs. We highlighted a few reasons why:

  • Single point of failure: Printing stops when print servers stop.
  • Deployment overhead: Failed scripts and GPOs lead to more helpdesk tickets, meaning more money out of your company’s pocket. 
  • Maintenance and patches: IT pros dedicate a lot of time to maintenance and security patches—especially when spooler vulnerabilities are exploited.
  • Security vulnerabilities: The average cost of a data breach in 2023 is $4.45 million—a number that has risen by 15.3% since 2020.  

Even with a perfect track record: Zero vulnerabilities, no failures, and no failed deployments, Quorcirca still estimates that companies spend around $3400 yearly per print server. 

Truth be told, the odds of having a perfect year of printing are the same as winning the lottery.   

 

Printing Is Costing You Time

Time is money in the eyes of an organization. And when IT teams constantly spend time on print-related issues, your company could argue they’d rather invest money in your team tackling mission-critical objectives—not printing. 

But which areas of printing does IT spend the most time on?

According to one study, IT teams spend an average of seven hours on print-related tickets per 100 calls. On top of stacks of helpdesk tickets, IT teams find themselves stuck spending time reacting to low consumables, pulling print reports from various OS and manufacturers, and updating printer drivers.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to reduce time spent on print management. Our experts identified a few modern solutions that help you erase tedious troubleshooting tasks from your agenda, including:

  • Self-service printing
  • Real-time printer alerts
  • Automated reports
  • Customized and automated deployments
  • A dedicated printer driver repository

We’ll talk more about how you can implement these later, but these solutions also help you address sustainability initiatives, which we cover in the next section.

 

Saving Through Sustainability

Sustainability has become a must for companies building for future success. Gartner found that 80% of business leaders see sustainability as a strategic play to optimize and reduce costs. 

Sustainable printing, however, has been a proverbial thorn in the side of IT. Ninety percent of North American companies are unaware of how many printers they have. Without a clear view of how many printers you have, it’s fair to assume those companies don’t know how much they are wasting. Formstack notes around 30% of print jobs never leave the print tray, and 45% of documents are trashed by the end of the day. 

So, what steps can companies take to start printing more responsibly? Here are a few tips:

  • Centralize your print environment to learn what you have in your ecosystem.
  • Track print jobs based on user, group, and department to determine your consumption.
  • Set quotas based on cost or volume to discourage unnecessary, large print jobs.
  • Add an authentication step for each print job with pull printing functionality.

These tips fall under the same umbrella of creating intentional printing habits. Once you have these practices and features established, that’s when the savings start to trickle in. You’ll see paper and ink consumption drop, users will become more aware of what they are printing, and confidential documents won’t sit in the print tray.

 

Addition by Subtraction

How do you add value to your team through subtraction? 

The solution is simple: Eliminate your print servers.

PrinterLogic helps you cut costs and reclaim the time you’ve lost by moving your printer objects from print servers to our centralized, cloud-native platform. Admins can deploy printers without GPOs, track print jobs, and empower end users to install printers themselves from a single UI. Moreover, our solution leverages direct IP printing to keep jobs on the local network, eliminating spooler vulnerabilities for good. 

 

See How Much You Can Save

Want to put a number on your potential cost savings after eliminating your print servers?

We’ve developed a formula to help you calculate your print savings by answering eight simple questions about your current print environment.

Try our free print savings calculator now.

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.   

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.