Printing in the cloud
With the increasing popularity of mobile working, Bring Your Own Device and co-working office spaces Cloud printing has become a hot topic.
With companies and providers alike, moving to a Software As a Service model (Office 365, Adobe CC, Google Apps, Salesforce, Dropbox, Mail Chimp, ZenDesk, DocuSign, Slack, HubSpot etc.) there is less reliance on “on premises” servers.
One of the last of the site servers to go is probably the office print server but with the end of Windows 2008/2008r2 looming on the horizon in Jan 2020 (a little over 6 months away) many companies are still running print and file servers on this platform.
There are potentially very big problems with this as:
Bug fixes will no longer be provided leaving systems vulnerable to attack
Software, utilities and features becoming incompatible with upgrades
New devices (e.g. printers) may be unable to connect with Windows 7
Virus protection software will stop supporting Windows 7
There are of course upgrade solutions to this including migration to new print servers running a supported operating system but this will be very expensive.
Printing as a Service?
There are new solutions that can completely avoid the need for huge expenditure on new servers and systems for those still relying on Windows 7 and Server 2008/2008r2.
Instead of turning to new servers clients can move to a modern SAAS like infrastructure.
EveryonePrint
One solution is EveryonePrint’s Hybrid Cloud Platform (HCP) which is a cloud-based print infrastructure solution that eliminates 100% of the expense of updating these print servers.
With EveryonePrint all users get the same experience whether you are printing from a desktop PC a laptop or a mobile device. EveryonePrint’s universal driver also means that regardless of manufacturer, model or features, everyone can print with a familiar interface.
You get an overview of all of your Multifunctional printers in a single dashboard regardless of manufacturer and from the dashboard you can manage and report in usage.
EveryonePrint is only one cloud printing solution (albeit a very good one) but is a great indicator of the way office printing will move. PaperCut and Google Cloud print may be an alternative then of course there is Ezeep cloud printing which is popular in co-working spaces.
As always a lot depends on your specific requirements.
Get in touch if you want advice for your specific situation.