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You may have heard the term “cloud printing” and wondered what this means. How can the cloud help you print something? Cloud print services essentially allow you to print from any device, to any printer, just by using the internet. Better yet, cloud print management can give you enterprise security features without a print server or special vendor software.
Office printing has been around since the early 1900s and has become an essential for all businesses. It’s not considered a glamorous or exciting topic and often senior decision-makers will put very little time or thought into it – regardless, there is huge importance in having functional printing facilities when you need them.
Legal documents, contracts, designs and communication materials all rely heavily on printing. Whether you work in finance, sales, marketing or administration, all these departments need printing at some point. The point is, printing just needs to work.
Today, we are seeing more and more demand for printing to adapt to the Microsoft “modern workplace” – an environment that harnesses cloud technology to become more flexible, collaborative and scalable. People want to be able to print from anywhere, at any time and from any device.
A cloud print solution modernises your existing hardware, making it ready for the modern workplace. Cloud printing has introduced a whole range of benefits, from security, cost efficiency and productivity. Cloud printing is intelligent, integrated, and built for the modern world.
Intrigued? Here are our top 5 reasons to integrate cloud printing into your business…
With so many businesses operating from multiple locations today, it’s essential that employees are geared-up with flexible technology to assist them in doing their jobs from anywhere.
Cloud technology, like Printix, can be installed onto any Windows, Mac or mobile device and acts as a mediator between person – and printer. This highly sophisticated software learns about you. It knows your job role and what printing requirements you typically have. It also knows what locations you will most commonly work from. It recognises your location, wherever that may be, and will sync you to the most local printer.
Wave goodbye to the days of tirelessly test-printing across the long list of printers your computer displays, desperately trying to determine which one is which!
With Printix’s “print-ready” technology, you can move from location to location freely, knowing that when you CTRL-P, your document will arrive at the most convenient printer, in the format you prefer.
This takes huge pressures off internal IT and support teams who may receive countless calls a day with mundane “which printer should I use” or “how do I print in colour” questions….
So cloud printing enables you to connect to local devices seamlessly, but what about security?
Take this common scenario. You’ve chosen to print a document, only to find yourself distracted on your way over the printer. By the time you arrive, the document is gone. Perhaps someone picked it up by accident?
You could print it again, but what if that document was confidential? Suddenly this scenario is more serious. Private information has been leaked and you have no way to reclaim it.
The choice becomes whether to print confidential documents at all or to enter the “print and sprint” culture – bolting from desk-to-printer throughout the day to prevent loss of documents.
The solution? Software that enables secure “follow-me” printing options.
Take Printix’s “Secure Print” feature as an example. With Secure Print, your job enters a virtual print queue. It waits in this virtual queue until you choose to release it. This means that in theory, you could choose to print something on your train to work and release it as you arrive at the office. This convenient printing option gives that extra layer of protection when printing.
In traditional print solutions, running a secure print server would cost far more than the printers themselves. And sometimes the print server becomes the problem, with calls to the IT department needed to track down your job.
Printix delivers enterprise features from the cloud, with no servers needed, and also has an application available to be downloaded on mobile phones. This allows users to release the job from the virtual queue while stood right next to the printer – giving complete monitoring of the whereabouts of any confidential documents.
In a world of remote working, any technology we incorporate into our businesses must be able to be used out-of-office.
Many of those in government or banking industries will have endured the strain of working from home whilst relying on printing during COVID-19. When in the office, authorisation to print documents on internal printers has already been set-up, but when using a personal printer, printing confidential documents isn’t always possible.
Technology like Printix appreciates the importance of enabling home printing in the modern-day. In fact, it creates personalised automations to allow authorised individuals to print freely from home devices.
All this is great, until you as an employee find yourself printing copious pages of documents on your home device and paying the costs for it!
Fear not, as Printix seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Power BI, a reporting tool that provides insights on users’ printing activity. These reports not only assist IT and support departments to make educated decisions when ordering print materials, but they allow for businesses to make fair reimbursements to staff who have had to print documents from their home devices.
It’s no use having cloud printing technology integrated into your business if it doesn’t connect effortlessly with your other cloud applications.
As a Microsoft preferred solution, Printix integrates with Microsoft Azure Active Directory to manage user access and enable single sign-on into the Printix app.
“If your cloud strategy already involves Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Intune, perhaps as part of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite, then you can add Printix as the missing link and thereby eliminate the use of print servers and move print management 100% to the cloud.” Printix
Take the scenario of onboarding a new employee, which can be a drawn-out and complicated process for your IT department.
When integrating Printix with Azure Active Directory and Intune, printing setup becomes a zero-touch deployment. Your newbie can sign-in to their new device using their Azure Active Directory credentials, Intune will download the Printix software, and Printix will automatically configure printers and drivers based on the user and location. No work for your IT department, as the cloud has handled the entire process.
Integrating new technology into today’s volatile businesses can be financially draining when tied to defined licenses and subscriptions.
You might have 30 employees who require the software today, and 500 more tomorrow, and then half that number in a few month’s time.
Cloud printing technology like Printix is flexible to your ever-changing business requirements and therefore only charges you per active user. If a user leaves the company or is on holiday and doesn’t login to the software that month, they don’t count towards your monthly total.
As with many other cloud services, this removes the stress of having to predict how many licenses you are going to use each year, trying to guess if you’re going to be scaling up or scaling down.
Combined with Printix’s low per-user price, you can add all your users to the Printix system, even if they only login from time to time.
So there you have it, the top 5 reasons to integrate cloud printing into your business.
By migrating to cloud printing, you can embrace a complete cloud way of working.
This cloud solution takes the strain off internal IT and support departments by enabling flexibility and security, via automated integration with modern applications. You’ll also keep the Finance Director happy with huge cost savings in software, support and consumables.
Cloud printing essentially provides many of the features that all cloud technologies have, which includes auto-scaling, auto-healing and 24/7 real-time monitoring. This built-in technology will always be running, removing the time and costs behind tech-support phone calls!
Want to migrate your business to cloud-based printing? Get in touch today!