Mobile printing in the Cloud

Lexmark has announced that its enterprise-class Print Release solution can be hosted in the cloud via a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Enterprises will have flexibility in choosing the best Lexmark Print Release deployment option to meet their needs ‚ either a traditional, on-premise deployment, or as a hosted service on a subscription basis. With the new service-oriented model, Lexmark provides a quick deployment and manages the Print Release solution, and associated infrastructure, remotely in a secure data center.

The hosted implementation of Lexmark Print Release includes broad support for enterprise-class mobile printing. With the Lexmark Mobile Printing App, which is designed for Apple iOS and Android smartphones and tablets1, employees can submit print jobs directly to the print queue and release them at any hosted Print Release enabled2 output device. The Lexmark Print Release solution can also be configured so employees can print from any email-enabled mobile device, including a BlackBerry, by simply attaching the document to an email and sending it to their corporate Print Release email account.

Lexmark Print Release not only supports printing from mobile devices, it also gives enterprises the ability to track and manage print jobs submitted from these devices when coupled with Lexmark’s activity tracking solution, Document Accounting. This powerful combination gives IT administrators better visibility into and greater control over the output environments they manage. Lexmark Document Accounting adds comprehensive tracking and reporting capabilities, which monitor the activity on output devices to collect detailed data and create reports by users, groups and devices. Print Release jobs submitted by mobile device users are tracked just the same as jobs submitted from a desktop PC.

Equipped with this valuable information, large organisations can analyse, adapt and drive improved printing habits among employees and more efficiently manage their printing and imaging assets to cut costs and save resources. In fact, customers who have implemented Lexmark Print Release as part of a managed services engagement have seen a dramatic reduction in page output, also enabling them to reduce the number of devices in their fleet.

Lexmark’s SaaS offerings will be available through Lexmark professional services engagements3.

‚Tablets, smartphones and cloud-based technology are rapidly changing the way enterprises are managing their technology assets, and Lexmark’s latest enhancements to its Print Release solution enable IT professionals to continue enhancing their output strategies while concurrently managing infrastructure costs and empowering today’s mobile workers,‚ said Marty Canning, Lexmark executive vice president and president of Imaging Solutions and Services. ‚For the past 20 years, Lexmark has helped many of the world’s largest companies maximise their IT investment and improve their business processes, and Lexmark’s new offerings are our latest examples of doing both successfully.‚

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