Cloud Deployment: 3 Reasons Cloud Printing Complements Your Strategy

Today, many companies have moved their IT operations into the Cloud. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2020, non-cloud based companies will be as irrelevant as non-internet companies are today.

The reasons why the upward trend of companies moving towards the cloud has never been clearer. Cloud computing offers unique reduced IT expenses and improved efficiencies. This shift has changed many legacy IT environments and business systems.

We all know that the cloud and virtualized desktop infrastructures improve workflow, reduces costs and frees up IT resources, but what about printers and printing paper?

It is the one thing that you cannot move to the cloud as users will always need to print out hard copy paper in hand.

The ability to print documents securely and on-demand is essential in many industries, particularly ones that require document security for sensitive information.

The Cloud has impacted printing easy and security, as companies can use virtualized printing to reduce cloud printing problems.

Specifically, cloud printing complements a cloud strategy in three main ways.

Workflow

From a back-end IT perspective, managing the printing process can get complicated in a cloud environment, especially in terms of mobility and bandwidth use.

Mobility poses a challenge in your cloud strategy because once your data center has been moved to the Cloud, it can no longer track the location of print users, disrupting user workflow.

Bandwidth use poses a challenge because most printers are not optimized for the Cloud and are not designed to handle networks going in and out of service, while consuming huge amounts of bandwidth.

Interested in finding out how you can implement cloud printing successfully? Check out this free whitepaper on secure cloud printing!

Security

With data security breaches occurring more frequently, it can be risky to connect devices to remote printers through the Cloud. There are three main areas that affect your cloud strategy with security.

Compliance: Industry verticals like healthcare, finance & insurance, public sector all most follow strict compliance requirements, as failure to do so can result in high fines and loss of client trust.

Encryption: Even though sensitive data may be protected behind a firewall; cloud printing opens the chance for hacking to your data.

Physical breaches: With printing, especially through the cloud, there is always a chance that someone else may pick up your information either on accident or on purpose.

Reduced Costs

Printing will always represent a major cost of certain industry verticals. The average company spends between 1 – 3% of its annual revenue just on printing.

Print waste is a major concern as much of the wasted paper comes from over printing pages that users don’t need, or re-printing documents that came out of the wrong printer.

On the other end of the spectrum, IT cost from printing issues also take up a lot of wasted resources. The average IT department spends 15% of its time responding to print related issues with user assistance, software compatibility and network connectivity.

Deploying cloud printing

Through Implementing a cloud printing solution, with a PDF compression, allows you to connect your cloud data center to remote locations and provides a fast and secure network for printing.  With the addition of some type of follow me or pull printing solution, allowing users to printing on-demand, anywhere, from any device.

It will also help resolve security compliance, encryption, reduce physical breaches and printing costs using a network print appliance for pull printing and a virtual print queue.