posted by Devin Anderson
Software as a service (SaaS) is quickly gaining traction in organizations of all shapes, sizes and industry sectors. Why? Because SaaS brings some clear advantages over traditional IT solutions—the most obvious one being the fact that there’s no software to install, update or maintain and no dedicated in-house hardware to run it. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can enjoy a SaaS solution, and that’s as true for SaaS print management as it is for document management.
To illustrate how SaaS printer management differs from its traditional counterpart, let’s take a brief look at PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud), the new SaaS print management solution from PrinterLogic. In traditional print management, you generally have two types of scenarios:
- Direct IP printing: Rock-solid reliability but a nightmare to manage. A single printer installation or driver update has to be carried out for each unique machine. Unlike with SaaS printing, there’s no centralized management.
- Print servers (centralized or distributed): Generally speaking, with print servers print management tends to be a little easier, but reliability is compromised. One rogue driver can crash a print server and halt printing for all users as a result. And, truth be told, print servers’ printer management isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Deployments tend to call for complex group policy objects (GPOs) or scripts. Plus there’s a heavy reliance on the WAN in consolidated infrastructures and limited visibility in distributed environments.
Next-gen SaaS printer management with PrinterLogic SaaS cherry-picks all the advantages of these two approaches and consigns the drawbacks of traditional print management to history. With PrinterLogic SaaS, you get convenient and powerful centrally managed SaaS printing with the ease and reliability of direct IP connections.
In many ways, PrinterLogic SaaS builds on PrinterLogic’s acclaimed enterprise-grade print management software solution while adding the benefits of a cloud-based SaaS printing architecture. If you’re migrating from print servers, all you have to do is let PrinterLogic SaaS import your existing print settings. It automatically recognizes printers, profiles, drivers and print queues, and then seamlessly transitions them to its SaaS print management platform. From that point onward, you can eliminate your print servers completely and enjoy PrinterLogic SaaS’s effortless SaaS printing.
But how easy is SaaS print management? With PrinterLogic SaaS, it has all the ease that hundreds of organizations have come to expect from PrinterLogic. You can make precise, automated deployments without having to resort to GPOs and scripts. You can rename printers on the fly, oversee and manage queues, and update drivers across an entire client pool with a few clicks. End users can identify and install nearby printers with a single click—without any need to call the service desk for help. PrinterLogic SaaS’s feature-rich SaaS printer management even allows you to carry out print auditing and costing across the entire organization.
Furthermore, through its direct IP printing model, PrinterLogic SaaS avoids the heavy WAN reliance that is typical of SaaS printing solutions as well as consolidated print servers. Once the client communicates with PrinterLogic SaaS, a direct connection between the client and the local printer is established. All print jobs are then relayed directly between the two devices, which eliminates the print-related data traffic that can tax the WAN link and cause printing slowdowns. It also ensures high availability.
The icing on this cloud-based cake is that, just like PrinterLogic’s on-premises print management solution, PrinterLogic SaaS integrates seamlessly with virtual environments. That means you—and, importantly, your end users—can enjoy the convenience of robust SaaS printer management and the stability of SaaS printing in your Citrix or VMware environment.
So if you’re wondering how SaaS print management stacks up versus traditional print management, the differences are substantial and compelling. Download our free PrinterLogic SaaS trial and see for yourself.