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secure print
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Founded in 1928, Carolina Container
designs and manufactures quality
corrugated packaging for customers
across the south-eastern United States.
The company’s IT infrastructure
includes seven centrally locatedWindows
terminal servers and 30 additional servers.
Most are virtualised with VMware to
provide various applications, including
printing, to 400 users. Seventy per cent
of users are on thin-client devices, with
the remainder using a mix of Windows
desktops, Mac computers, laptops and
mobile devices. All have shared access to
150 network printers of various makes
and model in 15 different locations.
The Challenge
The high volume printing demands of
Carolina Container’s business combined
with the challenges of managing
thin-client printing in a virtualised
environment created the need for a
universal printing solution.
The company also required an
anywhere, anytime, any device application
to print bar codes, quotes, invoices
and project data directly from e-mail
Secure print systems that hold
a print job on a server until
the user releases it by entering
a PIN at a network printer
can reduce print volumes by
20%-30%: they ensure people
only output the prints they
need and, because the user
is there to pick them up as
they come out, prints don’t
get lost or muddled up and
need to be re-printed. On the
downside, many solutions
require users to invest in new
devices adding to the expense
and carbon footprint of an
implementation. One that
doesn’t is UniPrint Infinity,
now being used by Carolina
Container, as it is designed to
work with multi-vendor fleets,
existing network devices and
diverse IT environments.
programs. Due to the high number of PDF
documents Carolina Container receives
from vendors and customers, being able
to automatically print to PDF when
e-mailing an attachment or an archived
file was an absolute necessity.
In addition, the large volume of
incoming HR records, billing sheets
and complicated documents with font
embedding that needed to be printed
securely – often from remote locations –
caused problems with bandwidth.
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.
The Solution
After assessing several other vendors,
Carolina Container opted for a UniPrint
Infinity managed printing solution, as
it had the flexibility to solve Carolina
Container’s problems and meet its specific
printing needs.
A key selling point was UniPrint’s
PDF-based Universal Printer Driver,
which simplifies printer management
and solves incompatibility issues by
negating the need to install multiple
manufacturer printer drivers on terminal
servers. The driver converts print jobs
into PDFs, compresses files by almost
90% for reduced network traffic, and
allows complicated customer documents
containing asynchronous font embedding
and barcodes to be saved, e-mailed, or
printed on-the-fly.
A UniPrint PrintPAL utility has fixed
IT administrators’ location-based printing
challenges by facilitating the centralised
management of printer authorisation by
department and user.
“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.”
Another element, the UniPrint Bridge
Server, eliminates the need to install
printer drivers on client devices, enabling
driverless printing. This gives PC, Mac,
thin-client device and mobile device
users seamless printing in the office and
from any remote location, including
their homes.
To meet, Carolina Container’s security
requirements, UniPrint supplied a vPad
user authentication device and encryption
control functionality. Print jobs are now
converted into compressed PDFs and
encrypted to increase security when
e-mailing documents. Users must also
authenticate themselves before print
jobs are pulled down and released at the
selected printer.
The Benefits
By deploying UniPrint Infinity, Carolina
Container has realised big 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;
and employees are able to exploit the
benefits of a virtualised print environment
more effectively.
Carolina Container is now set up to
support an increasingly mobile workforce
with simplified and centralised printer
management and documents that can be
printed out directly, and securely, from
any client device.
www.uniprint.net
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A quick, straightforward installation process
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Highly scalable as printers and employees are added
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Printer-vendor independent
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Secure and easy set-up of printer permissions
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Decreased bandwidth utilization due to PDF
compression
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Anywhere, anytime, any device secure pull printing
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Support for all client printing including BYOD printing
Key Benefits
By deploying
UniPrint Infinity,
Carolna Container
has realised big
cost savings
while improving
security...
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