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Are Your Current Print Management Practices Future Proof?

March 11th, 2021 by Tom Darnall

Print Manager for Business and Education | Print Management Solution

When planning their enterprise print management strategies, most organizations try to take a long-term view.

They look to purchase cost-sensitive workhorse printers for their fleet and printer management solutions that will support and integrate with their wider IT infrastructure for years to come.

What’s wrong with traditional print management?

The problem is that traditional enterprise print management solutions are just that—traditional. The basic workstation/print server/printer paradigm has been around for decades, and no matter how many iterations of Windows Server are released with performance tweaks and improvements to longstanding issues, the same shortcomings tend to persist. What this means is that your print infrastructure will always be playing catch-up as your IT infrastructure evolves around it. It could even be holding your organization’s IT infrastructure back. Not to mention your productivity.

To truly future proof your organization’s current printer management practices, it’s essential to look to solutions that have four key characteristics:

  • Scalable - to grow with your organization, regardless of how that growth occurs
  • Versatile - to adapt to changes—both seen and unforeseen—in infrastructure, workflow and industry trends
  • Robust - to provide uncompromising stability in day-to-day use as well as over time
  • Efficient – to ensure that ease of use and cost-effectiveness don’t experience diminishing returns

The only enterprise print management solution that seamlessly unites these is Function4's integration with PrinterLogic. Our approach to enterprise printing is unique because it combines the stability of direct IP printing with the unprecedented ease of centralized printer management, the smart convenience of end-user empowerment, and the power of a flexible printing platform with a remarkably small footprint. Taken together, those qualities amount to a future-proof print management strategy.

A closer look at future-proof print management

From a high-level perspective, that probably sounds ideal. But how exactly does it play out on the ground?

Let’s consider a common enterprise printing scenario. Standard practice is for most organizations to deploy new print servers to meet growth. The trouble with this is that growth can be unpredictable. Is it taking place in the same building or does it mean adding a new facility to a distributed environment? Will it involve a migration to a virtual desktop interface (VDI) solution? Are two very different print infrastructures and printer management approaches going to be merging as a result?

Unlike print servers, which are usually a response to growth and not a foundation for growth, Function4 & PrinterLogic’s innate versatility and infinite scalability prepare you for any eventuality. So, for example, existing print infrastructures can easily be imported or merged into a single centralized server running Function4's enterprise print management solution. Regardless of whether the organization is already distributed or about to become more distributed, PrinterLogic is able to expand to multiple sites with no need for additional remote infrastructure investment.

Function4 & PrinterLogic also integrates smoothly with any kind of environment – including complex VDI setups like Citrix and VMware. And its effortless printer management scales to organizations of any size: 100 printers and drivers are just as easy to manage as 10,000.

Although the future is unknowable, implementing PrinterLogic’s enterprise print management solution means you don’t need a crystal ball. With it, your printer management practices can evolve dynamically and reliably along with your organization.

Interested in eliminating all of your print servers?

We deliver a highly available Serverless Printing Infrastructure using a centrally managed Direct IP printing platform. If you want to empower end users with mobile printing, secure release printing, and many advanced features, we’d love to show you how.

Visit Function4 and contact an advisor below to learn more today!

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Posted in: Document Management

Function4 serves Houston, Beaumont, Paris, and the surrounding areas.