The Quocirca report shows that 43% of organisations have already implemented a Cloud Print management platform, with a further 37% reporting that they have plans to do so in the next two years (2023/2024). Enhanced security of cloud platforms is widely perceived as a key benefit from adoption, with 52% of respondents to the Quocirca report considered Cloud Printing to be more secure than an on-premises platform.
Five important things when selecting a cloud print partner
If your business is yet to fully embrace the Cloud Print option (or if your current supplier is failing to deliver what you need) you will undoubtedly be considering your options. However, with a wide selection of potential choices available and with the importance of Cloud Print to a modern business, it is vital that you choose the right partner to support the needs of your organisation and your team.
Here is our guide to what you should consider when looking to choose this important partnership.
1. Security: Choose a partner with robust security measures
It goes without saying that security is essential for any organisation, and your cloud hosted data is obviously a crucial element in securing all your information. Since cloud printing involves the transfer of sensitive data across networks and servers, it is essential that you choose a partner that has robust security measures in place. Your chosen Cloud Print partner should provide end-to-end encryption and employ best practices (such as multi-factor authentication, access controls, and data encryption to protect your data), along with full compliance with GDPR for broad data protection.
2. Reliability: Choose a partner that offers high uptime and availability
Along with security, reliability is essential with any critical business system – if you can’t rely upon your cloud solution it will make even basic business operations difficult and will disrupt your team’s ability to work and maintain customer service. When looking at potential Cloud Print partners it is important to choose one that offers high uptime and availability to ensure that your printing infrastructure always remains fully operational. The partner you choose should ideally have multiple datacentres, redundant servers, and a robust disaster recovery plan to minimise any potential downtime in case of outages or disasters.
3. Scalability: Choose a Cloud Print provision that can be expanded and reduced whenever required
We are living in challenging times right now, but even during more stable economic periods your business needs to remain flexible and able to cope with both increases and reductions in operations. Your Cloud Print provision needs to mirror this, rapidly and seamlessly expanding when required, but also able to reduce if needed, to avoid you having to pay for services you no longer require. You will need a Cloud Print partner that is just as flexible, offering benefits such as flexible pricing plans, unlimited printing capacity, and the ability to add and remove devices as required.
4. Support: Choose a partner that provides the right levels of support
Ensuring your Cloud Print partner provides your organisation with the right levels of support is essential, be that for your shared workplace team, those based remotely or at home, or those on the move who equally require rapid and hassle-free assistance. However good the technology is, if a Cloud Print partner does not deliver the support you need any issues or requirements could become inconvenient problems. It is important to choose a Cloud Print technology partner that understands the needs of your organisation and your team, which provides full technical assistance, has a robust knowledge base, and a dedicated support team to help you rapidly resolve any issues or needs that may arise.
5. Ease of Use: Choose a partner that delivers an easy-to-use solution
Finally, ensuring your Cloud Print partner delivers an easy-to-use solution should also be a prime consideration. With your team potentially using the print function from remote locations, it is important to choose a Cloud Print partner that provides intuitive services and interface for managing your print environment, so the whole team can use and benefit from it. Ideally you want to have access to a full range of tools/features including job tracking, costs, and security monitoring, all of which can be easily monitored whenever required.
How Konica Minolta’s Cloud Print solutions can help your business
Konica Minolta has been synonymous with print for decades and has a long heritage which is combined with IT expertise to deliver
Cloud Print solutions that support organisations like yours across the world.
Konica Minolta’s
Workplace Pure employs a Software-as-a-Service delivery model, enabling organisations like yours to simplify, centralise and automate their business processes. It features a Cloud Print option which enables you to print easily from anywhere with direct connection to Google and the Universal Print service from Microsoft.
Cloud security as its best
A major advantage of this Cloud Print option are its high security standards:
- Workplace Pure is hosted on the Open Telekom Cloud, which is Europe's leading OpenStack-based cloud solution.
- The data centres are located in Biere (Germany) and Amsterdam (Netherlands) and guarantee top levels of data security and availability. If a disaster occurs at one location, the data is still available at the other.
- For a particularly high level of security, the two data centres are each divided into three physically separate availability zones (AZs), resulting in a total of 6 AZs.
- Due to its location in Europe, the data is also stored in a GDPR-compliant manner.
- The Open Telekom Cloud is ISO 27001 (Information Security) and ISO 27017 (Security of Cloud Services) certified.
- Workplace Pure offers end-to-end encryption and multi-factor authentication, access controls, and data encryption to protect your data.