Print Server Migration vs. Elimination

Posted by Andrew Miller

You’ve come to a crossroads. It’s time to upgrade part or all of your print architecture, and you need to decide whether to migrate your print server—maybe using something along the lines of a print server migration wizard or a file and print server migration tool—or take the bold step of eliminating your print server altogether.

Let me be the first to reassure you: Eliminating print servers from your print environment isn’t as scary as you might think. In light of all the things that can possibly go wrong when you migrate your print server, not to mention all the hassle it involves (even when using something supposedly “automated” like a print server migration wizard), print server elimination starts to look like the simpler and quicker of the two options. When you factor in the long-term time and cost savings of elimination on top of that, it’s a wonder that anyone would consider migration in the first place.

At PrinterLogic, our print management solution has garnered a reputation for eliminating print servers from environments that never thought they could function without them. Many of our customers were in the same boat as you at the start: Migrate our print server or eliminate it? And many of them were amazed to find that they could not only eliminate them outright, but that PrinterLogic could be deployed in as little as a day or two, even in large distributed organizations.

Before you drop tens of thousands of dollars on new servers and licensing, then fire up the file and print server migration tool and prepare for the long, arduous process of transferring all the existing settings, drivers, profiles, and so on from the old hardware to the new, consider what PrinterLogic adds to your print environment—and what it takes away.

What it brings:

  • Centralized administration. Automatically deploy and effortlessly manage printers and drivers across the enterprise from a single pane of glass—without the need for group policy objects or scripts (GPOs).
  • Seamless Citrix/VMware integration. Not only does PrinterLogic leverage the strengths of virtual environments, it addresses their Achilles heel: enterprise printing. You’ll enjoy centralized administration along with features like print job compression and driverless printing.
  • Self-service printer installation. Through PrinterLogic’s intuitive portal, empowered end users will easily be able to install printers themselves, saving them (and you) a call to the service desk.

What it takes away:

  • Print servers! Never have to deal with one of these counterproductive print management dinosaurs again. When you get rid of print servers, you get rid of their licensing fees, their ongoing costs of maintenance and upgrade, the extra software like antivirus programs, their unreliability, and all the hassle that comes with trying to manage them.
  • Print-related WAN traffic. PrinterLogic’s direct IP foundation allows your end users to print directly from endpoint devices to the network printers. That frees up WAN bandwidth and speeds up the network.

And that’s only a tiny sampling of PrinterLogic’s benefits. So put the print server migration wizard away for good, forget about trying to migrate your print server, and implement PrinterLogic instead. It will import all your current printers, drivers, and profiles more reliably and efficiently than any migration tool, and in the end you’ll be free of print servers too.