Server-Less Printing: Trend, Fad Or Something Else?

By Martin deMartini, Senior Vice President, Transition Management, Y Soft

No one sees technology come and go like those in IT. Whether you are a VAR, MSP, software developer or integrator, you must be able to identify what is a trend, a fad, a new term, or whether it is something else that might be useful to explore. One such term that we hear a lot about is “server-less” print management solutions.

Techopedia writes, “Server-less printing refers to peer-to-peer printing over the internet protocol. This method removes the complication of having a piece of dedicated hardware for printing purposes and all processes and threads passing through certain queues, distributes, and other such nodes. Server-less printing is also cost effective due to less machinery cost, less software cost, and less backup server cost.”

Reducing total cost of ownership is an ongoing topic for any IT team; Gartner notes 80 percent of total IT costs occur after the initial purchase. That’s a lot. The idea expensive servers can be eliminated — making the total cost of ownership for print management much less than other solutions — is certainly an attractive one to explore.

But, is it a trend, fad, or something else? I say something else.

In reality, true server-less pull-print solutions are actually somewhat of a misnomer; pull print solutions need servers. However, there are still ways to significantly cut back on and eliminate many servers. In this regard, the proper trend description would be fewer servers instead of server-less. A deeper look at how to approach setting up such a system with fewer servers will help you support your IT customers better.

Modern print management software has technology called client-based pull-printing that allows spooled print jobs to be stored in different locations such as on end user workstations, file servers or cloud storage. This enables employees to maintain convenient user access to printing from any printer in the network and eliminate between two and four times the number of servers they previously needed.

There are five key items businesses should look for in a print management system when considering using fewer servers:

1. Strong security and simple failover and print job back up. Typically server-less solutions have no failover and job back up capabilities unless you install redundant infrastructure which defeats the total cost of ownership argument.
2. The ability to set and modify print job parameters like color or black and white, the number of copies, the print job billing code, etc. using built-in tools. This isn’t always available in a server-less system.
3. Isolation of print jobs so users can only see their own print jobs or print jobs shared with them. With server-less systems anyone with read access can see who is printing and what they are printing.
4. The ability to apply print rules common in print management systems such as forced duplex or printing in grayscale, to locally-spooled print jobs so all print rules are adhered to throughout the organization and costs are kept low while efficiency stays high. In a server-less system, Windows spooler is relied upon and is not always accurate nor does it always have complete print parameter options.
5. Simple backups using standard file system backup agents. Some server-less solutions hold print jobs in Windows Spooler, which can be difficult to back up without specialized agents.

By understanding modern technology and print management systems, you will be able to offer your IT customers the right advice and technology to help them reduce cost using fewer servers with all the benefits of a pull-print system. Even though true server-less pull-printing is a misnomer, getting close to that goal and significantly helping them reduce IT spend are possible.