Posted by Devin Anderson
Location, location, location is a maxim most often associated with realtors. Yet it applies just as much to enterprise printing—specifically, being able to easily enable seamless location-based printing for your employees.
Location-based or location-aware printing is as practical as it is leading-edge, because it quietly and automatically takes the guesswork out of printer installation. With location-aware printing (also known as proximity printing in Citrix environments), users within a specified range of IP addresses can conveniently access any networked printing devices that fall within that same range. That virtual location (IP address) can be linked to a physical location using variety of methods, creating a real-world scenario whereby mobile employees can instantly print at a branch they happen to be visiting, to give just one example.
When you use PrinterLogic to configure location-aware printing in your enterprise, you can quickly add printers to a workstation according to its IP address, computer name, Active Directory (AD) computer or group, or AD Organizational Unit (OU) membership. Users will always see the closest printer to their client device in any given session. That effectively allows you to automatically deploy printers based entirely on location, saving your staff and your employees the hassle of service desk calls to troubleshoot installation woes.
Because PrinterLogic works so well with a variety of virtualization solutions, you can easily set up proximity printing in a Citrix environment or enable location-based printing in a VMware Horizon View environment.
In the case of VMware, PrinterLogic dynamically provisions printers into VMware Horizon View VDI sessions, replacing ThinPrint location-based printing altogether as well as the related problems of managing endpoint device printer drivers or configuring custom printer settings. Not only does that give you effortless location-based printing with VMware View 5 or VMware View 6, you also enjoy further benefits such as:
- Simple and efficient driver management on endpoint devices
- Pre-configuration of printer profiles
- Faster logons
- No rights management
- Straightforward printer deployment
- Intuitive self-service printer installation
As mobility becomes the watchword in the modern workplace, location-aware printing will only grow in importance for enterprise printing in the coming years. Any organization that hopes to keep its employees satisfied and productive will have to make it an integral part of its print environment. Thanks to PrinterLogic, it’s possible to easily implement location-based printing in highly demanding enterprise environments—even (and especially) those that make use of Citrix and VMware Horizon View!