Posted by Devin Anderson
When you’ve spent any amount of time in a particular line of work, you pick up the lingo. You start using words or phrases that are shorthand for a whole host of ideas. Eventually those words or phrases become so commonplace that you can’t recall a time when you didn’t know them—but to the layperson’s ear, they might as well be Greek.
Take a phrase like enterprise print management solutions. It’s one we use often on this blog and in our press materials, because that’s exactly what PrinterLogic is in a nutshell. But what exactly do we mean when we talk about PrinterLogic as an enterprise print management solution? And how does it differ from traditional print management solutions?
Traditional print management solutions are best exemplified by print servers. These are hardware devices designed with the sole purpose of connecting client computers to printers over a network, functioning as intermediaries between the “Print” button on your screen and the device that prints out the physical documents. They have more or less been the standard for years.
As with any standard, however, there comes a time when their utility should be questioned. For the same reasons we no longer listen to music on wax cylinders or make our daily commute on horseback, print servers are looking more and more anachronistic. They entail high upfront and replacement costs, require a great deal of maintenance, and can be finicky (to say the least) in daily use.
Back when print servers were the only method of dealing with networked printing environments, they made sense despite their inherent drawbacks. But the size and geographic distribution of modern workplaces have pushed print servers to their usable limits, and what’s more, print servers have been superseded by more flexible, more robust technology—what we call enterprise print management solutions. Namely, PrinterLogic. And we’ve made it something of a mission to show companies of all sizes how easy it is to eliminate print servers forever.
By eliminating print servers and deploying PrinterLogic, you actually retain all the functionality of a traditional print management solution while introducing all the benefits of an enterprise print management solution. For example, you can still print to any networked printer. Only now you can print from end-point devices to the printers themselves, which does away with heavy WAN traffic. That reduces congestion across the entire network and speeds up print times.
Centralization is another huge bonus. With PrinterLogic, you can manage every single printer in the company from a single terminal. That allows you to batch or selectively update drivers with a single click, easily set default printers, or auto-deploy printers without having to use group policy objects, scripts or print servers. Centralization also means consistency. The management interface and processes are the same throughout the entire organization.
That also holds true for end users, not just admins. PrinterLogic empowers your employees with consistent self-service options, so users with everyday computer skills can install printers with just a click. Mobile employees can also print natively from any tablet, smartphone or netbook with a browser—yet PrinterLogic actually enhances that convenience by allowing you to double down on security with granular authorization and pull printing.
Combined with seamless integration into Citrix environments and powerful auditing options, that all adds up to a drastic reduction in WAN traffic, support desk calls, time spent on troubleshooting, and consumables usage. Which translates to huge savings in both the short and long term.
Now that we’ve highlighted just a few advantages of PrinterLogic as an enterprise print management solution, is it any wonder why we consider print servers to be a museum piece?