Everything You Need to Know About Print Infrastructure as a Service (PIAS)

For businesses seeking a comprehensive solution for secure, cloud-based printing, Print Infrastructure as a Service (PIAS) is an investment that offers numerous benefits. From secure printing to reduced costs, fewer IT issues, enhanced security, easy-to-manage systems, and other advantages, PIAS benefits ensure that printing is simpler, better and improves user uptime, whatever your industry.

How Does PIAS Work & What Does it Offer?

To give you a better understanding of how PIAS helps businesses, it is first important to know what it is not and what it is…

PIAS is not…

1. Toner management
2. Printer hardware servicing and management

For the above features, most hardware vendors manage these devices, and usually on a Cost per Copy billing model.

PIAS is…

1. Cloud-based Print Server
2. Quick Assist remote access to users’ PCs to troubleshoot any issues
3. Printer port management
4. Print Management Software (Print Director) optimisation and reporting
5. Segmentation of printers onto a separate subnet
6. Automated driver and queue management
7. Anti-virus protection (optional)

The above features are fully outsourced to Printsol, taking away roughly 50% of user IT frustrations and help desk calls.

PIAS Advantages Explained

Here are some of the biggest advantages of PIAS:

Cloud-Based Print Server:

• Costs will be saved by having the Print Server hosted, as the full management, updating and security of the print server now becomes Printsol’s responsibility. In one instance, a customer saved R300 000.00 simply by moving their Print Server to the cloud with Printsol.
• Printsol can address issues that may arise in a much faster time by having access to the Print Server. When updates are released, patches can be applied. This is not only for Print Director but also for other applications such as Microsoft. This is important to note, especially due to the potential hazards of new update releases. At the beginning of 2022, Microsoft released an update that caused the “Print Nightmare” technical fault. For customers using PIAS, this wasn’t an issue, as we could roll back updates quickly and have customers printing as per normal in a super quick time. We could also apply the fix across all our servers.
• Rules and report customisation can be set by Printsol at the request of our customers, by logging into the administration console on the hosted server. These requests can take minutes and not hours or days to action.

Quick Assist:

• Most print-related issues are user-based or on a PC. By outsourcing print infrastructure to Printsol, we make use of our Remote Monitoring application and quickly assist a user when they cannot print. In some cases, the user can continue to do their work, and we solve the problem in the backend. There are many reasons why printing is disrupted, and in most cases, it is an IT-related issue. For this reason, all Printsol technical staff are qualified IT technicians, and not printer technicians.

Managing Printer Security:

• PIAS in conjunction with Print Director can detect when the printer’s default passwords are still set on the printer or when the printer has open network connections. By failing to address these issues, you increase the vulnerability of your network and increase the chances of an attack from hackers. PIAS is Pro-Active in managing these risks.
• PIAS segments the printer network into a separate network or subnet, which limits the exposure to other devices.
• PIAS and Print Director enforce certain security features such as secure release, and keeping print jobs off the printer until the user is at the device, so documents don’t reside on the printer’s hard drive. Print Director synchronises with the company’s Active Directory as an additional security feature.

Managing Print Queues & Drivers:

• PIAS saves time by automating the deployment print queues and updating print driver settings. Synchronising with all popular identity management systems ensures that new users are onboarded quickly and with no fuss.

Enhancing Optimal Performance of Print Director:

• Similar to all software, Print Director will need to be updated and optimised from time to time to ensure maximum performance. This forms part of the PIAS offering.
• Often there are changes within an organisation – hardware swap outs, new users arriving and others leaving. PIAS will ensure these changes are effected on Print Director, to ensure the information remains relevant.

It has been proven that around 50% of all IT calls are printer-related, however of this 50%, probably 60-70% are user, IT or network related. PIAS takes care of the issue, so users can get back to work and print at the fastest time possible.

To find out more about the benefits of PIAS and what we offer at Printsol, contact our team today and let us know how we can help.