For a long time—too long, in fact—enterprise printing has pretty much been dominated by two architectures. The first is direct IP printing. The second is print servers.
Direct IP printing is great because it’s reliable and straightforward. But in its conventional form, direct IP printing suffers from a lack of manageability because each client–printer connection has to be established and updated manually. This makes direct IP printing inefficient in all but the smallest and most static environments. It also doesn’t offer a centralized window into the print environment, which hinders overall visibility.
Whether consolidated or distributed, Windows print servers offer improved manageability, especially in large or distributed organizations, but they do so at the expense of reliability. Print spooler crashes—which can be caused by corrupted print jobs, driver incompatibilities, and a host of other issues that stem from single points of failure—have the potential to bring printing to a halt for large pools of users or even the entire organization until the problem can be identified and fixed.
Furthermore, print servers can be expensive to purchase, operate, maintain and upgrade, and routine printer deployments and installations can be finicky as they depend on complex hierarchical attributes like group policy objects (GPOs) or a certain level of technical skill from end users. This is why many admins have long looked for a Windows Print Server alternative that will free them from the constraints of print servers while leveraging their advantages.
Wouldn’t it be great to have something like direct print server software — a solution that would combine the stability of direct IP printing with a Windows Print Server alternative that offered centralized manageability, increased oversight, reliable deployments and additional enterprise printing features?
That next-generation solution is precisely what PrinterLogic offers. Our enterprise print management solution is the centrally managed direct IP print software you’re looking for. It’s a Windows Print Server alternative that actually enables your organization to eliminate print servers entirely while enjoying the proven reliability of direct IP printing along with the ability to administer printers anywhere in the print environment from a single pane of glass. In short, it’s effortless and robust printing without a print server.
The advantages of PrinterLogic’s print management solution are extensive. To begin with, you can automatically and dynamically deploy printers using criteria like Active Directory (AD) attributes, IP address ranges and even MAC addresses in a direct IP printing environment without having to rely on GPOs or scripts. All of those deployments can be set up and modified using our acclaimed web-based admin console, which offers intuitive yet powerful control over the entire print environment.
Unique among Windows Print Server alternatives is PrinterLogic’s self-service installation portal, which empowers end users with the ability to identify and install nearby printers with a single click. You can even upload floorplan maps to make it easier for them to select the right local printer. By replacing your print servers or traditional direct IP printing environment with what amounts to hybrid of the two models that has this kind of functionality, you can drastically reduce print-related calls to the service desk as a result. That saves time, resources and ultimately money.
And that’s not all our solution can do. You can easily enable advanced features like Mobile Printing and BYOD Printing as well as print auditing to imbue your print environment with additional capabilities that can increase productivity, offer more flexibility and provide additional insight into your print environment. PrinterLogic’s solution delivers a level of manageability that is simply unavailable with conventional direct IP printing and a level of stability and functionality that no other Windows Print Server alternative can provide.