Printing has, and is, a traditionally well-known challenge in Server Based Computing environments. Print-IT is one of the first products that Provision Networks (well before became a member of the Quest family) offered that addressed this problem. When Provision Networks started doing VDI in 2005, we immediately recognized that printing would pose some of the same problems in VDI environments so Print-IT became an integral part of our VDI solution as well, thus providing a seamless printing experience across SBC, VDI and even Blade PCs.

Originally being one of the first products by Provision Networks, Print-IT is an extremely mature universal printing solution. In fact, universal printing as a description doesn’t do Print-IT enough justice. There’s a lot more to Print-IT then that. And since a lot of our customers are amazed at the versatility of Print-IT that comes as an integral part with any Virtual Access Suite license, I decided that it might be worth giving you a quick heads-up on the current feature set of Print-IT:

At a high-level Print-IT has three important features:

Universal Client Printing
Printing just works. No matter what printer you plug into your client, they are automatically available to you in any Terminal Server or VDI session. No printer driver maintenance on any of your Terminal Servers or Virtual Desktops. Ever. Period.

Universal Network Printing
Universal Client Printing is very good solution for dealing with remote users or users that aren’t a typical office worker. This is because of the fact that in the larger environments not every single user has their own dedicated printer attached to their client (although that might be nice for the user). In stead, networked printers are used. This poses a big challenge for many environments relying on other 3rd party application delivery products. When using the Virtual Access Suite this is no problem. It’s the same story as with client printers: no matter what printer you are using, they can all be made available to users in any Terminal Server or VDI session. No printer driver maintenance on any of your Terminal Servers or Virtual Desktops. Ever. Period.

WAN Optimized Printing
The aforementioned two features cover a lot of the printing challenges that customers face in SBC and VDI environments. However, another challenge is dealing with Branch offices. In enterprise environments we see a lot of customers that have centralized their Terminal Server and/or their Virtual Desktops in the data center. Often a print server is left at the branch office to support the network printer available to that branch office. Without proper management print job data sent between the data center and the branch office can pose a huge threat to the stability, performance and security of the environment. The WAN optimization features of Print-IT eliminate this threat by providing bandwidth control, variable compression, intelligent font embedding, encryption and other advanced techniques.

And if these three high-level features are not enough, consider these other features:

• Support for EMF and PDF modes of printing
• Does not require any server-side fonts to be pre-installed on the client
• Size-optimized print streams
• Adaptive compression technology (multiple compression algorithms for color and black-and-white images)
• Intelligent font embedding (only fonts that do not exist on the client are embedded inside the print stream)
• Partial font embedding (only the used portions of fonts are embedded inside the print stream)
• Page-level streaming for instant printing of large-size documents over low-speed connections
• Support for native printer features (i.e., bins, paper sizes, margins, print quality, and much more)
• Support for private printer features (i.e., manufacturer-specific features such as stapling, watermarks, etc)
• Support for the RAW data type (i.e., accommodates many legacy applications that perform their own rendering)
• Multiple printer naming options
• Syncing of default printer between client and printer
• Synchronous/asynchronous printer auto-creation (ensures the auto-creation of at least one printer before the server-side application is started)
• Support for virtually any printer make and model
• Create of Email PDF files directly form print job
• Ability to create printer with administrative permissions for the user
• Option to delete printers at session disconnect
• Option to send notification after print job

Well, the list goes on for quite a bit but I think you get the point. Again, Print-IT is an integral component of all Virtual Access Suite editions assuring that printing is never a problem again. You wouldn’t even have to consider expensive dedicated universal printing software. You be the judge. Have a try for yourself. You can download an evaluation copy of the Virtual Access Suite completely free of charge. Read about obtaining Virtual Access Suite evaluation software and licenses. If you need any help after that consider having a look at our “getting started guides“.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.