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.