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Private, Public or Hybrid?

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Managing a mobile print network

Is printing a problem for your employees when they’re away from their desks? What happens when they’re working in another department or within a different building on campus? Without a flexible mobile print network, productivity can quickly grind to a halt. Let’s say your engineering department runs LINUX, but your Marketing group is utilizing a Windows server. When users from each department meet, the differing networks make it difficult for the visiting party to connect to print. Windows users can’t connect to the LINUX network, and the LINUX users might experience similar problems when they use their laptops in Marketing’s section of the building.

Solve the network hodgepodge

Good news! You can enable printing for both parties using a private Cloud solution, such as HotSpot Enterprise, to bridge both networks and enable printing for your users. Because HotSpot Enterprise is deployed on your internal server, it creates a private Cloud for your organization. Instead of having to spend time trying to connect to a network, users simply send their print jobs to the Cloud. This makes printing easier for your employees because your private Cloud handles the task of connecting to printers for them. Now anyone visiting a different department can print to any output device on the network.

Protect your print jobs

An added benefit of private Cloud printing is that your print data is kept in-house. Since the private Cloud is hosted internally, your print jobs never go outside your firewall.

If you’re still concerned about sensitive data changing hands, you can add another layer of security by enabling secure release for print jobs. Deploying HotSpot Enterprise with a cost-tracking solution such as Streamline NX or Equitrac Follow-You® Printing can give you the extra protection you need. With these features enabled, users send their print jobs to your Cloud, but their print jobs are held there until they authenticate at a device. This way, their sensitive documents are not sitting out in a printer tray, where anyone could pick them up. The documents are printed only when the right person is present.

What about your guests?

Do you have guests or contractors on-site trying to print as well? Rather than grant guests network access, you can extend Cloud printing to them. Guest printing can be enabled via the public or private Cloud. A public Cloud solution such as Print Cloud lets guests email their print jobs to the Cloud, and in exchange they receive a release code that can be entered at any enabled device to retrieve their prints. In this case, you’re using a hybrid Cloud network – both public and private Clouds are leveraged to enable communication between mobile devices and printers.

However, if concerns exist about any information leaving the premises, you may want to enable guest printing via the private Cloud inside your network instead. With a solution like HotSpot Enterprise, you could simply set up a different email address for guests to use to send their prints to the private Cloud. This keeps guest print jobs separate from internal user jobs, while still keeping guests inside your firewall.

With the availability of private, public or hybrid Cloud printing solutions, you can now offer a printing method to guests and employees alike that eases their connection frustrations and meets your company’s security needs. 
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