Companies are striving to remove infrastructure faster than ever before. According to Gartner, three-quarters of organisations will adopt a digital transformation model built in the cloud by 2026
Tim Muckart. Director, Channel Sales EMEA & APAC at Vasion, argues that SaaS print management plays a vital role in any organisation’s digital transformation and that moving from on-premise, physical resources to cloud-based solutions is critical to any digital workplace transformation.
Implementing a serverless printing infrastructure means eliminating expensive to install, maintain, upgrade, and replace, print servers and instead utilise a cloud-based solution to manage, track and deploy printers. With its cloud-native print management product PrinterLogic, Vasion is well-positioned to help channel partners to transform how their customers manage print.
PrinterLogic replaces on-premise print servers (and the associated cost) with a serverless, direct IP printing solution, and implementation is quick and easy, too. Along with eliminating print servers, serverless printing helps IT teams centralise the print environment, providing admins with a bird’s-eye view of all printer objects, drivers, and users across distributed office locations.
Why channel resellers should adopt a cloud-first strategy There are, says Tim, many reasons why channel resellers should be looking to adopt a cloud-first strategy.
“First and foremost, print places an unnecessary burden on IT teams. Gartner estimates that print-related helpdesk tickets account for 40 per cent of an IT team’s workload.”
Vasion surveyed 520 public sector organisations in the UK to find out more about how print is managed across various departments and multiple locations. The results revealed a disconnect in how print is perceived.
32 per cent of senior managers and the C-Suite said that print-related issues were resolved in less than five minutes; compared to 62 per cent of end-users who stipulated that it takes IT more than an hour to find a fix. Moreover, almost half of end-user respondents stated that they raised a helpdesk support request for print, more than once a month.
“For resellers offering helpdesk support, that’s an additional cost, and in the case where a customer’s internal IT team is spending too much time dealing with print, that can lead to customer dissatisfaction.
With PrinterLogic, customers typically see a 95 per cent reduction in print-related helpdesk calls,” Tim said. “Secondly, one of the biggest issues cited by customers is the cost of running print servers, an issue that’s even more pertinent now in light of the ongoing energy crisis. In addition to licensing fees, the labour cost of managing print servers can be extremely expensive too, because they must be maintained at every location. PrinterLogic enables organisations to remove the burden of managing, maintaining and licensing on-premise print servers, and enjoy all of the benefits of a serverless printing infrastructure.
“Over and above the cost savings around infrastructure, with PrinterLogic’s serverless solution, it’s also possible to further improve the bottom line with features such as the ability to set print quotas to make budgeting easier, or applying rules such as forced duplex or black-and-white-only printing across the business to cut down on additional expenses,” he added.
Minimise risk
Minimising risk is another strong reason to migrate customers’ print infrastructure to the cloud.
“An organisation’s attack surface gets larger with every print server added to the network,” Tim explained, adding: “Constantly having to manually patch, update and secure multiple servers to protect from and mitigate vulnerabilities like the Windows Print Nightmare, adds even more to the IT workload. By moving to serverless printing, organisations can reduce risk and be protected from any future issues that are discovered.”
The PrinterLogic cloud-native platform is a true software-as-a- service (SaaS) printing solution – that doesn’t require VPN connections and integrations with leading identity providers (IdPs) keeps things secure and enables printing from remote or new locations.
Features such as secure release printing keeps information secure by ensuring that documents are not printed until the person is there to pick them up. Plus, direct-IP printing means print jobs never leave the customer’s network.
AWS Digital Workplace Competency
PrinterLogic has also achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Digital Workplace Competency status, recognising its deep experience helping customers build a digital workplace on AWS to free end- users from the pains of print servers and costly print management and infrastructure, allowing them to print securely on any device, from anywhere, at any time.
The AWS Digital Workplace Competency helps customers find highly specialised AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners offering solutions on AWS that help them effectively support remote workers and business continuity with end-to-end digital workplace in the cloud. APN Technology Partners achieving AWS Competency provide features that help reduce security risks and meet compliance requirements while allowing customers to effectively support remote workers and implement business continuity plans.
Central management
PrinterLogic provides IT staff with an interface for defining all printers including label and POS devices across all locations. It supports native print drivers for all printer makes and models which delivers full functionality of the devices’ feature set, profile settings and deployment options. Settings are configured in profiles and instantly passed down to the endpoint when they are installed.
A web-based tool with floorplan maps enables end-users to easily identify and install nearby printers. Based on the deployment profiles from IT, only authorised printers will be displayed to users when they look at the map, even if other printers are in the vicinity.
Installed on end-users’ desktops, the desktop client acts as the communication liaison between the workstation or virtual client and the admin console. It automatically installs select printers on the user’s device and captures usage data that includes user, IP address and operating system.
Manage the unmanaged
Just under half (45 per cent) of respondents to Vasion’s research said that their entire print infrastructure was provided under a managed print services (MPS) agreement. However, the majority of organisations owned a varying number of print devices that fell outside of the MPS contract – in fact 39 per cent of those polled said that up to 75 per cent of the printers in their organisation were standalone unmanaged devices.
“Self-managed printing environments are full of pain points for IT teams and end-users alike. On- premise print servers are energy- and cost-intensive to run and maintain. Providing end-users with access to printers often involves complicated scripting and GPOs; it’s well documented that high numbers of print-related IT support tickets place added pressure onto over-stretched IT resources; and in many cases, print failure is not a quick or simple fix, resulting in disgruntled end-users,” Tim said.
Managing the unmanaged
“In today’s hybrid working environment, employees work across several locations, including home, and we have seen an uptick in the number of standalone printers that are being used every day. Our research found that up to 75 per cent of the printers in a customer’s organisations could potentially be unmanaged – and for resellers that’s leaving money on the table,” Tim warns.
“It’s fair to say that while MPS has long been the de-facto to effectively manage on-premise print infrastructures, in today’s remote and hybrid working model, it doesn’t always make sense for every printing device – but what’s the best alternative?
“Enter the cloud – what PrinterLogic’s cloud-native serverless print management solution does is enable seamless driver deployment for large volumes of printing devices that exist outside of the MPS contract. For example, PrinterLogic manages 11,500 print queues across 2,500 retail stores worldwide for a large retail customer whose 80-strong head office printer fleet falls under a managed print service.
“We are passionate about reducing IT infrastructure and are on a quest to eliminate all print servers. Over the past ten years we have developed our serverless print management product, PrinterLogic, which is now a true cloud SaaS market leader. For resellers still on the fence about cloud print management, I’d urge you to get on board now,” he concluded.
