guide
“We’re Unable to Go Serverless.”
The Complete IT Guide for Healthcare Organizations
What will it take to get rid of our print servers?
If you manage IT at a hospital or health system, you know exactly what this feels like. Your helpdesk queue fills up Monday morning. Drivers break after every Windows update. Print servers go down at 2 am. And somehow, you are always the person the floor calls.
The frustrating part? It is not the printers causing this. It is your print servers. And in a healthcare environment, your team is already stretched thin. Print should not be the thing that consumes your day.
The good news: eliminating print servers is possible, and it is simpler than you think. Four steps will transform your print environment and give your team back hours every week.
1
Acknowledge Print Servers as the Problem
Healthcare IT teams carry a long list of responsibilities: security patches, endpoint compliance, staff onboarding, system uptime. Print should not be your helpdesk’s time. But for most health systems, it is.
The instinct is to blame the printers. They jam, they need service, ink runs out. But the infrastructure behind your printers: your print servers: is where the chaos actually starts.
Here Is Where Print Servers Are Costing You:
Single Point of Failure
One server crashes and printing stops across an entire floor or facility. The helpdesk floods instantly and your team scrambles to fix infrastructure that should not exist in the first place.
Decentralized Chaos
Multi-site health systems often run one print server per location. More servers means more management, more risk, and more staff needed just to keep printing alive.
Security Vulnerabilities
PrintNightmare exposed how dangerous print spooler vulnerabilities can be. Keeping up with patches in a healthcare environment is relentless and high-stakes.
Single Point of Failure
One server crashes and printing stops across an entire floor or facility. The help desk floods instantly and your team scrambles to fix infrastructure that should not exist in the first place.
You would not be alone in making this move. Health systems across the country are recognizing that the print server is the problem: and eliminating it is the solution.
2
Justify the Value of Going Serverless
Once you have identified print servers as the root cause, the next question is: what does your organization gain by eliminating them? In healthcare, the answer spans three categories that every IT leader and hospital administrator cares about.
Money
Eliminating print servers removes hardware, licensing, and maintenance costs immediately. But the financial case goes deeper in healthcare. Print server vulnerabilities are a known attack surface. A single print-related data breach does not just cost IT: it costs the organization.
In 2025, the average cost of a data breach in the U.S. reached $10.22M.
Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report
In the past year, print-related data breaches cost an average of $1.28M.
Source: Quocirca Print Security Landscape 2024
Going serverless also eliminates the need to stand up new infrastructure every time a clinic opens or a facility is acquired. You scale printing by adding users: not servers.
Time
The time savings begin immediately after deployment. No more manual patch management for print servers. No more traveling between locations to troubleshoot. No more spooler crashes flooding your queue on a Monday morning.
Vasion customers report reducing print-related helpdesk tickets by 70% or more after eliminating print servers. In a health system where your team is pulled in every direction, reclaiming that time is not a minor improvement: it is a transformation of what your team can actually focus on.
Resources
Managing a distributed print environment across a multi-site health system typically requires dedicated IT staff at each location. Going serverless changes that equation entirely. A single admin can manage printers and users across every location from one central console: no on-site visits required.
When a new clinic opens or a hospital is acquired, you add it to your existing environment in minutes. You do not hire a new IT team just to keep printing functional.
3
Find a Solution That Checks All the Boxes
Not every cloud print management platform is built for healthcare. As you evaluate options, your organization has requirements that go beyond basic printing. Use this checklist to assess whether a solution is truly fit for your environment.
Cloud-Native Architecture
A serverless print management solution should be built cloud-native from the ground up: not a legacy server-based product with cloud features bolted on.
Identity Provide Integration
Single sign-on with Entra ID, Okta, and other IdPs is essential. Users should authenticate before releasing print jobs: a core requirement of a Zero Trust Architecture.
Secure Print Release
Badge-based or PIN-based print release keeps sensitive documents from sitting unattended at shared printers across your facilities.
Compliance Certifications
FedRAMP High Authorization, ISO 27001:2022, and SOC 2 Type 2 are the credentials that matter in healthcare. Ask every vendor which of these they hold.
VDI and Mixed-OS Support
Citrix, VMware, and mixed Windows/macOS environments are common in health systems. Your print management solution needs to work across all of them without exceptions.
Print Activity Reporting
Visibility into who printed what, when, and where helps you manage costs, enforce policies, and respond to compliance inquiries without scrambling.
Self-Service Printer Installation
End users should be able to find and install printers themselves from a visual floor map: without calling IT. This alone can eliminate hundreds of helpdesk tickets per month.
Mobile and Off-Network Printing
Staff who move between locations or work remotely need to print securely without VPN dependencies or manual reconfiguration every time.
Questions to Ask Every Vendor:
- Are you cloud-native, or cloud-based? (There is a meaningful difference.)
- Do you hold FedRAMP High Authorization, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 Type 2?
- How long does deployment take, and do you require paid professional services?
- What do your healthcare customers say on G2 and Spiceworks?
- How is your support team structured, and are they available around the clock?
4
Get Hospital Leadership on Board
You have done the work. You understand the problem, you have quantified the value, and you have identified the right solution. Now you need to make the case to your CIO: and anticipate the questions that will come up.
The good news: the business case for going serverless in healthcare is strong, and the risks of waiting are getting harder to ignore.
Answers to the Questions You Will Hear:
Will This Disrupt Staff Workflows?
No. Going serverless does not require a disruptive cutover. Print Automation runs alongside your existing infrastructure. Your legacy print servers have less and less to do until they have nothing left to do at all. Staff experience the change as: printing just works now.
What Happens When We Open a New Clinic or Acquire a New Facility?
You add it to your existing environment in minutes from a single console. No new print server to stand up. No on-site IT deployment. No additional licensing per location. You scale printing the way you scale everything else in the cloud.
Is Serverless Printing Secure Enough for a Healthcare Environment?
Yes: and it is more secure than what you are running today. Eliminating print servers removes the attack surface that PrintNightmare exploited. No print spooler, no exposure. Badge-based print release keeps sensitive documents off unattended printers. End-to-end encryption protects every print job in transit.
Will This Create More Helpdesk Tickets?
The opposite. Vasion customers report reducing print-related helpdesk tickets by up to 95%.* Users install their own printers from a visual floor map: no IT ticket required. Your team gets their time back.
What PrinterLogic Delivers for Health Systems
PrinterLogic is the cloud-native serverless print management platform built to eliminate print servers and the overhead that comes with them. Here is what health system IT teams gain after deployment:
- Print servers gone: manage every printer and user from a single console, regardless of how many locations you support.
- Self-Service Printer Installation via a visual floor map: end users find and install printers themselves without opening a ticket.
- Native integration with Entra ID, Okta, and other IdPs for seamless, secure authentication.
- Badge-based and PIN-based print release so documents only print when the right person is at the device.
- Full support for Citrix, VMware, Windows, and macOS: your entire mixed environment, one platform.
- Mobile and Off-Network Printing for staff who move between sites or work remotely.
- FedRAMP High Authorization, ISO 27001:2022, and SOC 2 Type 2: the security credentials your organization needs.
- Deployment in days, not months: fewer than 1% of customers ever need paid professional services.
13,000+ customers globally. 96% retention rate. Up to 95% reduction in print-related helpdesk tickets.*
Ready to simplify printing for your organization?
