Better network printing

That "paperless office" idea was nice, but it may be time to give it up. Quit wishing and hoping you will no longer buy paper by the case load. Quit dreaming of the day when an easy to use and inexpensive electronic document management system falls into your lap. People love to print on paper, so it's time to get the company printing system organized. It's even more critical when the company uses some type of non-Windows host. Those add a new level of printing complication.

I've seen companies take long journeys toward printing nirvana, only to find the way full of detours. First everyone gets a printer, because ink jets are so darn cheap. Then they realize they're still buying paper as well as liquid ink that is costlier than the finest French parfum (even more expensive when the French spelling for perfume is on the bottle).

Second, people jump into networked printers, buying new printers with network connections and adding external print servers. Better, but they still have a variety of printer types and models, meaning client computers using them must have the right drivers. Cost of printing supplies drops as laser cartridges replace ink cartridges, but the cost of support rises, and zooms again when larger host systems need printers. Then someone suggests jumping into the world of IPDS (Intelligent Printer Data Stream). Sounds good, especially the APA (All Points Addressable) printers, until management gets the price quote. Back to square one.

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That "paperless office" idea was nice, but it may be time to give it up. Quit wishing and hoping you will no longer buy paper by the case load. Quit dreaming of the day when an easy to use and inexpensive electronic document management system falls into your lap. People love to print on paper, so it's time to get the company printing system organized. It's even more critical when the company uses some type of non-Windows host. Those add a new level of printing complication.

I've seen companies take long journeys toward printing nirvana, only to find the way full of detours. First everyone gets a printer, because ink jets are so darn cheap. Then they realize they're still buying paper as well as liquid ink that is costlier than the finest French parfum (even more expensive when the French spelling for perfume is on the bottle).

Second, people jump into networked printers, buying new printers with network connections and adding external print servers. Better, but they still have a variety of printer types and models, meaning client computers using them must have the right drivers. Cost of printing supplies drops as laser cartridges replace ink cartridges, but the cost of support rises, and zooms again when larger host systems need printers. Then someone suggests jumping into the world of IPDS (Intelligent Printer Data Stream). Sounds good, especially the APA (All Points Addressable) printers, until management gets the price quote. Back to square one.

Odd that an office service as critical as printing doesn't have many good answers. That adds up to opportunity, according to the folks at Ingenica, a company that made its mark in printing support in the Citrix and Windows Terminal Services environment.

Ingenica recently revamped its popular UniPrint printer solution to work with general Windows servers and standard Windows clients, along with all types of host systems that need printer support.

Ingenica's new UniPrint Host Edition is a centralized, managed, print system that cleverly jujitsu's the problems with printer incompatibility, odd print streams and the driver dance on client machines by throwing them all over for the Portable Document Format (PDF). All print output from any system gets converted into PDF, just like it was heading for an HP LaserJet 4. Once the print output gets converted technical life gets easier. Every decent printer in the world handles PDF files without a hiccup, remote printer redirection becomes a snap, and print output can stay as files on hard disks rather than smearing ink on paper.

All host output routed through UniPrint ceases to be AS/400 or Unix or iSeries or whatever print output, and becomes a print job that works on just about any Windows-supported printer. Still have ink jet printers on every desk, but can't convince your 5250 terminal emulation program to upgrade the driver and support those ink jets? UniPrint makes it happen.

AS/400 systems and their brethren often live in back offices, warehouses and manufacturing sites. But reports must be printed through Windows clients to Windows printers back in another office. Print streams, designed for locally attached printers, look pretty bloated compared to PDF print jobs. UniPrint says a one page document may be 1MB of normal print control language stream, but only about 100KB as a PDF file. In other words, data links for remote print support between offices suddenly see one tenth the amount of traffic for the same amount of printing. That's like getting a new “turbo” data link for free if you do lots of remote printing.