Printing: The final frontier
Printing has been one of the final frontiers for the mobility movement. Oliver Hill, HP printing and personal systems commercial channel manager, discusses the changes.
The technology landscape for businesses is changing as the world becomes increasingly mobile. Notebooks and PDAs have given way to smartphones and tablets, and the merging of mobile devices and cloud services has become one of the most significant enablers of business productivity and innovation seen in the past decade.
We now hold the power of communicating and computing in the palms of our hands, nearly anywhere business or life takes us.
One key business process, however, has eluded the mobility movement: printing. Even the most technically enabled business travellers find themselves hunting down print services while on the road, losing precious time and productivity, simply to print a document.
Finally though, a truly mobile print experience is available and it is helping organisations to further drive business productivity.
Mobile printing solutions now available for enterprise unleash the full potential of the customer’s smartphone, overcome VPN hassles and ultimately free print from the drivers, cables and operating systems that held it hostage for so long.
They also integrate with the customer’s existing IT environment and give employees a simple and intuitive way to print in the office and to thousands of other mobile print locations. For the reseller, this means a new revenue stream – one that delivers value to their customers’ ongoing need for increased productivity and innovation.
Printing freedom
The imaging and printing industry is transitioning from a hardware focus toward enabling the fluid movement of information. We’re creating technologies that make businesses more efficient, productive and successful, and make lives easier.
Alongside resellers, vendors are continually innovating to leverage the growing online world. We are packaging solutions that utilise all our web-based technology offerings such as cloud, wireless connectivity, and remote access within a private or public network.
The freedom offered by a single, ubiquitous Print button eliminates the need for print drivers and cables therefore removing much of the hassle for the IT manager – benefits that can significantly reduce costs and be particularly attractive in smaller organisations where IT resources are limited.
In an industry that many thought would become obsolete along with fax machines and cassette tapes, mobile printing solutions are proving quite the reverse.
With an increasing number of mobile employees, resellers can help facilitating efficient business practices and continue evolving to address the ever-changing needs of the mobile workforce.
