It is hard to imagine a day when workers pushed heavy steel trolleys of white and blue mainframe-generated dot matrix print packs down corporate corridors, with a pack for each individual executive to scrutinise the previous day's events.
This was a massive advance on the previous generation, but it was still labour-intensive; the print packs took forever to go through, they were often ignored, and forests were consumed for daily reports.
Fast-forward to one of the legends of retail, Raymond Ackerman. When he walked into his Claremont office, in Cape Town, a trim statement of the previous day's national trading was on his desk. He wanted less, rather than more, information. A summary.
The fact is, as gleaned from above, everyone needs to know what is happening in their businesses, and the chosen method is printing, which means an agreed-upon business infrastructure is needed so there can be a single, common view of the truth.
Smart printing
Traditional printing was awkward, costly, and often ignored, but it has evolved from the centralised, giant mainframe connected to a central printer to a smarter way of working. The printers of those days were almost the same size as the mainframe itself, and their delivery was greeted by press releases and the attendance of the executive team, reported on the front page of the IT paper of the day.
Today, by and large, printing is taken for granted, even though it is still the way in which most corporate communication and validation takes place. Try and imagine performing a financial transaction without a printed proof of payment.
From channel attach, to serial cable, to auto-recognition USB, from a printer the size of a room, to a tiny inkjet printer next to the executive's PC, and now fully untethered printing, with no cable in sight.
Workers today expect to be able to do their work wherever they are with their smartphones, tablets and notebooks. They may be at home, in a coffee shop, taking an order, servicing a customer or overseas, but they may need to print, and they do so through the cloud.
It's a miracle
They submit their files to the invisible ether, and miraculously their documents appear at a designated printer of their choice. They do not need to go back to the office to complete an order, or submit a report.
Behind this miracle is a powerful infrastructure, one which secures the transmission, and printers which recognise the identity of the person involved, and validate it, removing any risk.
At the same time, the world has become a place where corporates can take their entire printing fleet, which can be chaotic and out of control. Individual executives love their own printer, next to the PC, and will often buy it independent of corporate procurement principles and procedures.
Try and imagine performing a financial transaction without a printed proof of payment.
So an Olivetti, an OKI, a Brother, an HP and a Xerox would sit in the same office, with duplication of consumables, cartridges forgotten in cupboards, and massive wastage.
There would be little, if any, management of the overall infrastructure, as it was simply too complex. Then there would be the central printers, which might be from a different supplier.
IT would spend an inordinate amount of time managing printers, ordering cartridges and ribbons, and managing a disparate infrastructure.
As with any other part of IT, printing needs to be architected and managed against this architecture. As with IT architecture, there needs to be a degree of rigour and change management. Many executives will resist the attempt to remove their printers, as it grants them a degree of comfort and privacy, but the need for a managed print services solution must be driven hard.
The savings are spectacular: in one example, a company saved R3 million a year, just in its head office. The control that can be applied is another huge factor, especially in shared environments such as educational institutions.
One supplier, one invoice, cost reduction, heightened security, answerability and audit trail: this is the reason managed print services has become one of the most popular technology trends of the times.
In the next Industry Insight, I will delve into the future of printing.
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