Cloud computing is nothing new. In fact, it’s a staple of everyday life: Streaming music, movies, or TV? You’re in the cloud. Backing up photos on your phone? Cloud. Using online spreadsheets? Oh, you better believe that’s cloud.
Like entertainment streaming and countless other services, print management is another area being enhanced by cloud computing.
It’s an obvious enough desire: eliminate on-site print servers and leverage the cloud for your print environment. Cloud printing. But there’s more to it than that…
Picture this: you’re sitting at your office computer, next to your printer. Traditionally, your printer and computer connect via a wireless or wired network, and your secure and quick printing has historically been facilitated with the help of an on-premises print server.
The dream of cloud print management is to outsource printing to a cloud provider without a print server on-prem. For that, you need software to talk to both your printers and the cloud.
First, if you’re sending your print jobs to a service in the cloud, you’re sending documents over the internet — which can be slow and a security concern. So you have to think about your organization’s risk posture and protection barriers.
Secondly, once your job reaches the cloud provider, you still need to get it back to the printer securely and quickly — especially in complex environments. Extra software or hardware is needed on your network to fetch the print job from the cloud.
Ready to learn what it will take to tame the cloud for your printing?
