The office print management industry is on a journey of digital reinvention, at an inflection point where the traditional hardware-led transactional models are no longer sustainable. While leading vendors are already developing their “as-a-service” offerings to drive service revenue opportunities and build longer-term customer relationships, more momentum is needed.
Today, businesses of all sizes are making increasing demands of their suppliers, seeking IT-centric expertise and support for innovation. Digital transformation needs are driving the industry to reinvent itself to meet the renewed needs of office workers. Evolving strategic imperatives and a rapidly changing workplace mean that organizations are re-evaluating how technology delivers business value and competitive advantage
Managed Print Solutions have evolved to include remote printing, automated print queues and workflow enabled printing. Moreover print management solutions now has to work across the devices and platforms to enable third party integration and security. This is where the relevance of a seamless solution comes into place that provides complete visibility and control of your print environment.
Read our article on Managed Print Services. Ever wondered how much is your Print infrastructure costing your business? See how Managed Print Services helps your business
Papercut – Smarter Print Management
PaperCut was born in 1998 in Australia out of a desire to solve the problem of waste print in the education sector. The founders Chris and Matt at that time were working as system admin at a local high school in Melbourne where they saw overflowing bins of printed paper and decided to write “a bit of code” to help the school monitor their printing and reduce waste. This soon spread like wildfire resulting in the birth of Papercut as a company.
Essentially PaperCut is a software application designed to help organizations manage printing. It helps to:
- Minimise waste
- Save paper and toner/ink
- Improve document security
- Save the system administrator’s time
- Encourage end-users to improve printing behavior
PaperCut print management software works by intercepting print jobs as they pass into a print queue. It watches the queues and extracts job information such as page counts and uses this to implement:
- Logging, charging, control, quotas, reporting or a combination of all
- Or security features like secure print release, archiving and watermarking
PaperCut is typically used to:
- Track and control all print, copy, fax, and scan activity on MFDs.
- Manage user access rights to devices based on function, for example, ‘marketing’, ‘administration’, and ‘finance’.
- Implement copy quotas, charges, and per-page costs.
- Enhance document security with Find-Me print release at both MFDs and printers.
- Enhance device security with managed access to your Multi-Functional devices via user ID or building access cards.
- Allow for cash payment of print, copy, scan, or fax — for pay-for-print environments.
Typically PaperCut print management solution is installed on a server, but also supports local workstations. Many sites compliment the solution with optional embedded software on touch-screen MFDs, and/or use PaperCut’s mobile/tablet print options. The print server is a central machine that hosts shared print queues and coordinate printer setup and driver deployment. Print servers also help centrally manage printing.
Even though PaperCut does not need a print server, setting one up streamlines administration and simplifies the setup of PaperCut. A print server does not need to be a dedicated system – in many cases an existing machine can take this role. PaperCut is vendor agnostic/neutral, which means that it can support as many operating systems, platforms, and devices as possible.
Easy Printing – Enable Print Management That Works On Every Platform
PaperCut MF fits in with your print environment, not the other way around. Configure things exactly to your liking, and the application makes sure the printing part simply happens, every single time.
Secure Printing – Protect Data Before, During and After Printing
PaperCut MF’s security puts peace of mind center stage. Physical measures protect documents throughout their entire lifecycle – and end-to-end encryption keeps data as breach-proof as possible.
Central to many best practices in security (not just print security) is the ability to uniquely and accurately identify the end user. Desktops should require users to authenticate themselves against a centrally managed source of accounts (i.e. Active Directory, eDirectory, LDAP, Open Directory). This way, you can attribute jobs to these users and control access to various devices as needed.
Identifying the user becomes challenging when he/she chooses to print from their mobile or BYOD device. And a mobile or BYOD device may not require a user to authenticate before access.
PaperCut can bridge this gap by ensuring that jobs are correctly authenticated before being accepted by a print server.
MFDs and some printers provide for user authentication at the device through card swipe, ID number or other methods. This is an important safeguard to prevent unauthorized access to a device. Two-factor authentication provides an additional layer of security by requesting a user for additional authentication information.
PaperCut for example, provides for a PIN number to be entered as the second factor to authenticate a user after swiping their card or entering their ID number.
Print output left sitting in a printer tray is not the only way sensitive print data can be accessed by someone other than the owner. Spool files stored on the print server waiting to be released may also be viewed if accessed by malicious individuals. Jobs should be automatically removed from the hold release print queue after an appropriate period of time. This also allows you to reduce the load on your print server and save paper and toner by eliminating printing of jobs that are no longer needed. PaperCut allows you to define how long a print job stays in this hold release print queue before it is automatically deleted via a Job Timeout feature.
Users are accountable for what they print and this in turns promotes responsible printing within an organization. PaperCut allows you to share some or all of a user’s printing history with them in several ways. You can simply share their print history with them or you can quota their printing ability and have them initiate a request and justification for more printing once they hit their limit.
A secured print system should keep a comprehensive record of all user print jobs. This should include information identifying the user who printed the document, the document name, the computer used to generate the print job, the output device, and the date and time of printing. The existence of this audit trail enhances accountability and traceability, and encourages users to act with integrity. PaperCut retains detailed information in logs and archives. In addition, PaperCut offers a wide range of audit reports detailing all transactions that have occurred in the system.
Apply Print Management Policies Enterprise-Wide
With PaperCut, printing requests are intercepted at the print server to control jobs according to policies that encourage or enforce good behavior. Use job filtering to advanced scripting (JavaScript) to implement policies and improve device utilization.
For example you might route large jobs to dedicated high-speed printers, display popups to ask end users to confirm single sided output, automatically delete print jobs with incorrect paper sizes or suggest an alternative printer when a device is offline.
Administer Centrally, Manage Easily
PaperCut provides browser-based administration access from any network location, providing advanced administration and configuration options in an intuitive user interface. End users have access to a set of web tools to track their own activity in real-time, query their account balances, view transactions, and transfer credit to other users.
Integrate with Your Intranet and Other Systems
A customizable web interface ensures you can easily integrate with your intranet site, and a fully documented API and scripting interface let you integrate PaperCut with other IT systems.
Cut Waste and Your Carbon Footprint
Encourage responsible printing with PaperCut quotas and print policies, cutting paper and toner costs and power usage. At-a-glance reporting on CO2 and carbon emissions – by CO2 volume or by tree – shows the impact.
Solve mobile and BYOD Printing
Allow users to print from whatever BYOD or mobile device at their disposal. No matter the operating system, their location, the file format or the brand of printer, PaperCut has simple solutions to solve all these scenarios. All solutions integrate into PaperCut’s standard print charging/accounting/quota process.
Scale Up Effortlessly
Modern software design and architecture provides scalability for networks of all sizes, from five to 500,000 users. Regardless of the number of servers and end users on your network, PaperCut will meet your needs.
Maximize Uptime and Availability
PaperCut delivers a robust approach to maintaining service by clustering at the print spooler, application server and database (for cluster-aware databases), as well as automatic fail-over protection against single points of failure.
PaperCut understand this all too well and have a Print System Health interface ensuring the print environment, and indeed the printer itself, are no longer dark spots in your network. Never has the humble printer been raised to this level of pampering. Dressed to impress, it can now expect the same level of attention its network cousins have had for a very long time.
Watermarking and Digital Signatures
Watermarking is a technology that augments a printed page with text added at the time of print. A watermark may contain information such as the user who printed the document, the date on which it was printed, and the printer used. In this way, watermarking can act as a reminder to users that the source of a document can be identified and traced back to them.
A digital signature is a digital code uniquely generated by taking various print job attributes, such as print time, username, printer name, and document name, and combining them with a secret key.
A digital signature applied to a printed document as a watermark can be used to quickly trace a printed document back to a specific entry in the print audit log. Best practice printed document security combines these three features — watermarking, digital signatures, and a comprehensive print log — to provide full traceability and security of printed documents. PaperCut enhances document security by providing all three features, working in tandem — watermarking, digital signatures, and a comprehensive print log searchable by digital signature.
Driverless Web Printing
End users are able to print wirelessly from laptops, notebooks, tablets and smartphones without a driver installation or server authentication. Tasks sent are halted and then released directly by the user from the nearest available printer. Wireless printing is included in PaperCut MF’s standard charging, accounting and allowance processes.
Why you should try Papercut print management software?
PaperCut is an application that promotes responsible printing, thereby minimizing waste, reducing costs and limiting carbon emissions. Printing is controlled by policies and protocols that ensure appropriate access and use.
Users are able to print wirelessly from a variety of devices and the Find-Me feature protects confidential documents and reduces the volume of unclaimed prints.
Capable of producing many types of reports on usage, accessible from any web browser, PaperCut is easy to install and provides advanced central management and control of users and devices.
The latest software ensures scalability for networks of all sizes, while the company prioritizes maintaining service to maximize uptime.
If you have any questions or would like further information, please get in touch with our experts to find out how Al Reyami Technologies can help you to implement a PaperCut solution to boost your business.
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