Printing strategy moves from hardware to people

Printing and copying documents is part of every office workers` life. Until recently, the focus was on cost of ownership and feature sets. As people become mobile within the wireless office, a printing strategy that is `people centric` needs to be developed to ensure staff can access the resources they need, where they need them, without blowing the stationery budget.

Alan Austin, general manager: sales at Gestetner SA, says: "For most IT and office managers, a recommendation to develop a `document output strategy` sounds like massive overkill, bringing a level of strategic thought to a topic that is normally managed at a purely tactical level. Practical concerns are very much the priority: how much am I paying for toner and paper, how long can I keep using my printers, and how do I stop the marketing department using up all the coloured ink?"

There are a great many benefits to taking a large step back from the operational issues of printing, and look at the "whys", "whos" and "wheres", especially as the nature of the corporate workplace changes with increasing wireless mobility of executives.

There have been several waves of output management strategy: the first was cost of ownership, where IT managers started to get management tools that gave them some granularity on how much they were spending on consumables, hardware, maintenance and support. For the first time office managers could work out which department is consuming the most of the document management feature and where there was possible wastage. The next major wave that required a strategy shift was device consolidation with the advent of networked printers - more people could share the same devices more easily. The third wave was multifunctional devices - printers and copiers that combined major functions such as printing, copying, scanning and even faxing. In the midst of this came colour printing, which dramatically changed cost management.

As it stands today, IT managers have a fair degree of control, or at least access to accurate information on costs, with the ability to choose from a range of networked devices with volume, colour or multifunctional capabilities that meet the requirements of each department or workgroup. "However," says Austin, "there is a new challenge: workgroups are no longer static. Wireless networking has resulted in employees moving about and connecting to a device can be done via fixed or wireless networks as well as through direct device-to-device Bluetooth or infrared links. Therefore, the output strategy is no longer: `which devices do I need to have to service user requirements, where do I put them and how do I keep costs down?`, but now has to take into account availability of service. If a senior manager is visiting a different office and needs a quick printout, how can he or she find and connect to the nearest printer, and how do you manage billing back to their business unit?"

Currently, an output strategy needs to take into account who needs access to specific types of resources, where these resources are placed on the network, and how users can gain access to the resources they need, wherever they are.

For example, administration department personnel might need access to high-volume cartridge-paper black and white laser, copying and scanning only while the marketing department may need black and white laser, colour laser, scanning and fax. The output strategy has become role-based, rather than location-based.

With mobile users accessing different printers, IT managers need to be sure that not only can a user connect to the printer they need (and have authorisation to use), but that they have the correct drivers. Future issues are going to include Bluetooth-enabled printers, where a user may walk up to a convenient printer, and connect directly - convenient, sure, but this level of flexibility must be manageable within the overall corporate output strategy.

The output strategy needs to evolve away from being planned by physical location, just as networking architectures have had to evolve away from physical subnetting for managing security and resource availability, and move to virtual private network-type architectures where users` privileges were assigned by directory-managed policies that interacted with intelligent routers and switches.

"The secret to an effective output strategy in today`s mobile office environment is the ability to manage devices and access to them in a way that synchs up with the enterprise directory services. This means that while the physical devices may remain on the edge of the network, their management must be held right at the centre. IT managers need to define an output strategy with policies, so that these can be implemented in network user management; they need to ensure that users can connect easily, but that they only have access to authorised resources, and that costs can still be managed," concludes Austin.