As an IT professional, you wear a lot of hats in your organization.
Your influence on company success may as well dub you The President of Productivity and Processes.
You’re responsible for analyzing technical problems, solving issues with innovative IT solutions, and evaluating user needs based on feedback. You have a hand in everything and are expected to be efficient when fixing hardware and software.
However, to do your job effectively and keep up with workplace demands, you need modern solutions that adapt and grow with you. That’s why it’s time to start talking about the elephant in the room that cuts into your daily work life and slows down end user productivity.
Your print server.
Why Print Servers Slow You Down
For forward-thinking IT professionals like yourself, archaic hardware like print servers just can’t keep up with modern solutions designed to streamline work processes. They don’t integrate with innovative solutions that are necessary to compete with other leaders in your industry.
Besides, when was the last time you remember saying, “Print servers speed up my work,” or “Print servers make my job easy”?
Probably not lately.
Or ever.
Below are a few other reasons print servers are the major “elephant in the room.” And why it might be time to face the fact that print servers aren’t the de facto print solution anymore.
Server Crashes Cause Printer Downtime
When a centralized print server is a key cog in your print infrastructure, it cripples your organization if it crashes. Productivity slows down, and you’re on the hook to take care of it so business can continue as usual.
More often than not, crashes occur due to heavy print traffic. This pushes management to get another server to disperse print traffic. As your organization grows, you start acquiring so many servers that they become harder to manage without more resources and manpower.
You’d think more servers would enhance your print environment. Although setting up additional print servers frees up print job traffic and eliminates the single point of failure, the cost to operate, maintain, and license them increases. Plus, you lose centralized control, making it harder to track print jobs and deploy printers accurately.
But employing more print servers doesn’t mean server crashes completely disappear.
Their Security Is Dependent on You
You get out of print servers what you put into them. That’s what the hope is, at least.
If you stay current on updates and patches, you put yourself in a position to succeed and keep your environment secure. However, print spooler vulnerabilities started to put things into perspective and spotlighted print servers as vulnerable pieces of legacy hardware.
Security patches became more frequent, admins had to disable the spooler service altogether, users needed admin rights just to print, and just when admins thought PrintNightmare was over…BAM! More patches, more headaches, and more Reddit investigations just to get through the torment.
Spooler vulnerabilities aside, it’s tough manually securing your print servers by using data encryption for communication, adding security extensions, and asking end users to use stronger passwords to avoid data breaches.
No matter what, you’re taking on a lot of responsibility just to secure your print environment.
We feel for you.
They Restrict Your End Users
We live in an age where flexibility is a must for employees. They move from floor to floor, between buildings, go on business trips to other countries, and work from anywhere. Traditional print environments haven’t developed fast enough to keep up with new workforce trends, making printing flexibility non-existent.
Many hybrid employees use their mobile devices (tablets, laptops, etc.) to access company documents and critical information. What they are unable to do is print off-network securely—where and when they need to. They’re burdened with waiting until they arrive at a remote worksite to print all their documents.
These limitations put a damper on productivity and also put pressure on you to deploy printers every time a user walks into an office building.
You’re Always Reactive Instead of Proactive
Server and printer issues are inevitable in traditional print environments. When a server crashes, you get a helpdesk ticket. When a printer is out of ink, you get another one. In every situation, you are a sitting duck waiting for a call to fix something print-related. To add fuel to the fire, it stops momentum on other projects or initiatives you’re trying to address to help your company move forward. Being reactive doesn’t allow you to tackle bigger problems and form a long-term strategy to help streamline print management for you and your colleagues.
It’s not a great position to be in.
What’s needed is a print solution that supports you and enables you to become proactive by addressing issues before they happen. You need all the tools at your disposal to not only reach your IT team’s long-term goals but solve print-related situations with more accuracy—giving you more free time.
That’s where centralized, direct IP printing comes in.
It’s Time to Let Go of Your Print Servers
Centralized, direct IP print management with PrinterLogic eliminates your print servers, keeps print jobs local, and enables you to control your entire environment from a single console. Our SaaS platform cuts out the manual labor associated with traditional print environments by empowering you to automate deployments, print cost reports, and security updates to streamline processes for you and your team.
No more crashes.
No more restrictions.
No more patches.
So you can finally start being proactive in your print environment.