5 reasons why more and more customers are moving to cloud-print management solutions
Cloud services are starting to impact the print industry. Businesses that need print products in different parts of the world are outsourcing their print needs to a cloud-print service more and more. If a publisher, for example, needs to print books in different countries or regions, it can use a service such as Cloudprinter to take the order, handle the technology-side of things and then route the job to a local printer.
A recent report commissioned by industry body Digital Workspace Ecosystem Alliance (DWEA) highlights that cloud-print services are flourishing as more and more organisations look to the benefits of shifting their IT infrastructure out-of-office.
‘Cloud services’ refers to software and data that is accessed over the internet and stored remotely – think of music streaming services, online software such as Microsoft 365, or storage providers such as Google Drive or Dropbox.
In a business context, these technologies are often referred to as a digital workspace – a virtual office that can be accessed from different locations and devices. Cloud-print services are a central part of this digital workspace. Where companies would once have print servers in the office that were maintained by an IT department, in a digital workspace print operations are entrusted to a specialist vendor. Employees then access their print requirements through the internet.
DWEA’s State of the Digital Workspace 2023 report (released at the end of 2022) interviewed 2,660 digital professionals globally. It found that 93% of respondents viewed cloud printing as an integral part of their organisation’s cloud strategy. For those that had made the switch to print cloud management, more than 70% rated the experience at seven out of ten or higher.
Why are so many making the move? We’ve got five good reasons to switch to cloud-print services.
1. Reduced complexity
The Covid pandemic upturned conventional notions of office work as people were forced to work remotely. What was seen as temporary has become the new normal – more than 58% of the DWEA survey respondents said they were offering employees the option to work either remotely or on a hybrid basis. This creates a headache for IT departments, as people work on different devices and systems. Cloud print management solutions offer the advantage of compatibility with any end device, including mobile, via a single management interface. They can handle both virtual print jobs as well as those made ‘physically’ on the company premises.
2. Lower maintenance and costs
With print-management services in the cloud, organisations don’t need onsite servers – nor all the associated infrastructure costs behind-the-scenes maintenance. This frees up IT teams for other tasks. The State of the Digital Workspace report found that, after switching to cloud-print management, 55% of respondents’ IT teams were either spending less time on print-related support or had lower costs.
3. Simplicity and reliability
Keeping systems up to date with software fixes and patches is essential in the modern workplace. But 33% of DWEA survey respondents admitted that staying on top of printer and scanner driver management was a struggle. With cloud-based print systems there is no need to worry about installing updates, device configuration or compliance – it’s all done automatically. Similarly, new users can be onboarded easily with universal configurations, meaning there’s no need to worry about software or compatibility drivers.
A cloud-service provider also enjoys the advantage of having IT expertise to hand (whereas an organisation may need to bring people in to fix a problem), as well as having the resources to mitigate outages or other problems.
4. Adaptability
Remote print services can auto-scale. This means that if your organisation grows, there’s no need to go out and buy more servers (and acquire extra IT support staff) because cloud services are flexible. Conversely, if print demands declines, you aren’t left with unused infrastructure – the cloud system scales down with you.
Given that there is a global shortage in IT staff skills, remote print services also relieve the burden of finding staff in the first place. In a 2021 report on IT skills and salary, 76% of IT decision-makers reported a critical skills gap in their teams (a 145% increase since 2016), while 54% had been unable to fill one or two positions.
5. Security
Cyber security is a big concern for all business – and a problem that is only going to get worse. A survey last year by research company Quocirca found that 52% of companies surveyed globally trusted cloud-printing platforms to be more secure than onsite setups.
One reason cloud-service providers have the edge is that they are able to constantly monitor the security of a system and utilise data encryption. They can also implement zero-trust practices whereby every user interaction is verified (as opposed to letting users operate freely on the network once they have logged in). According to a global 2022 security study, 55% of surveyed organisations had implemented zero-trust initiatives, while 97% expected to do so within the next 18 months.
The digital workspace is only going to grow and cloud printing along with it. The Quocirca survey found that 47% of organisations had already moved or expected to move their IT infrastructure to the cloud by 2025. At the same time, while 43% of those surveyed were using a cloud-print management platform, a further 37% planned to migrate to one by the end of 2024.
