“UniPrint provided us with an all-round printing solution and immediately lowered our cost of ownership.”
Carolina Container Future-Proofs Printing Functionality and Improves Security with UniPrint Infinity
The Organization
Founded in 1928 and recognized nationally as an industry innovator, Carolina Container designs and manufactures quality corrugated packaging for customers across the southeastern United States.
The company’s unique IT infrastructure includes seven centrally located Windows terminal servers and about 30 additional servers.
Most are virtualized with VMware to provision various applications, including printing, to the workforce.
The heterogeneous environment is comprised of 400 users with shared access to 150 network printers of various makes and models in 15 different locations. 70% of Carolina Container’s users are on thin-client devices and the rest are using Windows desktops, Mac computers, laptops and mobile devices.
The Challenge
The high volume printing demands of Carolina Container’s business combined with the challenges of managing thin-client printing in a virtualized environment, made them search for a universal printing solution.
They required an anywhere, anytime, any device application to print bar codes, quotes, invoices and project data directly from their e-mail programs.
Due to the high number of PDF documents Carolina Container receives from different vendors and customers, being able to automatically print to PDF when e-mailing an attachment or an archived file was an absolute necessity.
The company also had a large amount of incoming HR records, billing sheets and complicated documents with font embedding that needed to be printed securely – often from remote locations – causing bandwidth issues.
Carolina Container’s system administrators were plagued with printer driver incompatibility issues causing frequent server crashes and excessive help desk calls.
The company also had a critical need for security given the sensitive nature of customer documents and an increasingly mobile workforce.
Carolina Container began its search for a managed printing solution to help its growing employee base print more seamlessly, more securely and more cost effectively.
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The Solution
While several other vendors were auditioned to solve Carolina Container’s printing challenges, UniPrint Infinity became the permanent choice.
It demonstrated the ability and flexibility to solve Carolina Container’s problems and specific printing needs.
Despite Carolina Container’s relatively diverse usage scenarios brought on by dispersed employees and a complex computing infrastructure, the UniPrint Infinity installation and setup was quick and straightforward.
UniPrint’s PDF-based Universal Printer Driver simplifies printer management and solves incompatibility issues by negating the need to install multiple manufacturer printer drivers on terminal servers.
UniPrint’s universal printer driver also compresses print jobs by almost 90% into PDF files. This process optimized bandwidth and saved the company money right from the start.
In addition, the PDF conversions allow complicated customer documents containing asynchronous font embedding and barcodes to be saved, e-mailed, or printed on-the-fly.
The UniPrint PrintPAL utility fixed the IT administrators’ location-based printing challenges by facilitating the centralized management of printer assignments per department and per user to specific printers.
“That lowered our total cost of ownership immediately,” explained Jc Coleman, Network Administrator at Carolina Container. “Before UniPrint Infinity, we had to go to each printer and assign who had access; that meant modifying 120 different settings on each printer. Now users only see the printers they need access to.”
The UniPrint Bridge Server eliminates the need to install printer drivers on client devices, enabling clientless printing.
As a result, PC, Mac, thin-client device and mobile device users experience seamless printing in the office, from home or any remote location.
Security issues had long been an issue for Carolina Container. UniPrint overcame this challenge by offering a vPad user authentication device and encryption control functionality.
Print jobs are converted into compressed PDF’s and encrypted to increase security when e-mailing documents.
Users must also authenticate themselves before the print jobs are pulled and released to the selected printer, adding an additional layer of security.
By installing UniPrint Infinity, users were able to print key documents right when they needed them and on whatever printer they chose, dramatically reducing printing costs and security risks.
The Benefits
By deploying UniPrint Infinity, Carolina Container has realized key cost savings while improving security and ease of administration and use.
Employees can now print critical documents anywhere, anytime and from any device.
Smaller print jobs – through PDF compression – have decreased the need for costly IT bandwidth and administrative support.
Employees are also able to exploit the benefits of the virtualized print environment more effectively. Carolina Container is now set up to support their increasingly mobile workforce with simplified and centralized printer management and documents that can be printed out directly, and securely, from any client device.
Key Benefits Include:
- A quick, straightforward installation process
- Highly scalable as printers and employees are added
- Printer-vendor independent
- Secure and easy set-up of printer permissions
- Decreased bandwidth utilization due to PDF compression
- Anywhere, anytime, any device secure pull printing
- Support for all client printing including BYOD printing
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