Konica Minolta SA introduces EveryonePrint, the freedom of printing in the cloud
Bidvest company, Konica Minolta South Africa has made EveryonePrint (EOP) available to companies wanting to establish a private hosted cloud printing environment.
Mobile technology is quickly advancing to the point where users can accomplish tasks on a smartphone or tablet that once required a laptop or PC. This computing power, combined with anywhere-anytime connectivity, means mobile devices are becoming powerful and pervasive business tools. An IDC study, for example, predicts 75,5 percent of workers will have some form of mobile connectivity, and there will be more than 1,2 billion mobile workers worldwide by 2013.
According to Mohammed Vachiat, product manager at Konica Minolta South Africa, despite the rapidly increasing use of smartphones and tablets in enterprises and other sectors, printing infrastructure has, however, not kept pace with mobile technology. “Printing from mobile devices remains a challenge, and most users must take time to transfer documents from mobile devices to a network-connected PC or laptop by e-mail or thumb drive before printing. The result? Distracted staff, lost productivity, and last minute scrambles to print even the simplest of documents,” he says.
IT managers and administrators should thus welcome the versatile EOP functionality, that includes follow-me printing and mobile printing, without the need to manage any applications on the client side. EOP also addresses the following critical enterprise requirements in mobile printing: security and control, ease of installation and flexibility.
“EOP offers platform- and device-independent printing of office related documents. Importantly, it is compatible with any brand of smartphone or other mobile device. This allows a mobile workforce to benefit from a new freedom and attractively enhanced flexibility, as they gain instant access to printing wherever they happen to be,” says Vachiat.
Follow-me printing “inside the cloud” does not require users to determine a certain output device in advance – they can make this choice as they go along. Using the authentication functionality, EOP can be adapted and configured for employees and/or external users. Furthermore, guests also enjoy the benefits of driverless printing and can easily generate their own printouts by sending an e-mail to a preconfigured address or by uploading their documents via a web browser. No software installation on the user’s mobile device is required.
Vachiat explains that EOP is a way to easily establish a private cloud print solution in corporate environments and that the product’s enhanced security features avoid unattended printouts in the printer output tray. “This also means that EOP has the ability to save printing costs because sent but forgotten print jobs will not be printed,” he says.
In addition, EOP results in eco-friendly reductions of paper and energy consumption, IT-friendly use of standard applications to print for all platforms and user-friendly, highly convenient printing from mobile devices. It also facilitates accounting with a straightforward integration into existing accounting systems, such as Konica Minolta South Africa’s Pcounter software.
Key features include:
- convenient driverless mobile printing;
- flexible print job submission via e-mail, landing page or EOP printer driver;
- easy modification of basic job settings during print job release;
- office file format support for mobile printing – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, pdf, Web sites, TXT and more;
- EOP printer driver support for unlimited applications, such as Windows, Macintosh, and Linux;
- access limitation, for example to known users in the corporate network by authentication; and
- print job release via PIN ID for anonymous users.