In my experience as an IT services professional, I noticed a large portion of help desk tickets involve printer issues. For help desk technicians, those problems are often difficult to solve since it can be hard to remotely "see" the settings of a malfunctioning printer. Walking users through printing out network configuration pages or doing other diagnostics can be difficult.
Eager to simplify life for partners, Lexmark is countering other manufacturers in offering a solution for MSPs to provide managed print services. The newly launched Lexmark Cloud Services is a suite of cloud solutions that include:
- Lexmark Cloud Print Management;
- Lexmark Cloud Fleet Management; and
- Lexmark Cloud Connector.
It also includes Real-time analytics to provide a snapshot of all printing, copying and scanning activity across the enterprise.
Lexmark Cloud Print Management
Many companies opt to give dedicated printers to employees who print and manage sensitive documents. But purchasing and maintaining per-person printers can be expensive and inefficient.
Lexmark Cloud Print Management attempts to solve this problem by providing a secure print release feature. The device will hold the submitted print job in a personal queue until the user authenticates at a specific printer to release the job. Not only does this help with sensitive documents, it can also prevent waste from print jobs that are never retrieved, either because the employee thought it was printing at a different printer, or they just forgot about the print job.
Another feature of the Lexmark Cloud Print Management platform is the option to keep print jobs inside the firewall. This feature is needed for those companies who are under government compliance regulations like the healthcare industry.
Lexmark CPM also supports mobile printing from iPhone, iPad or Android smartphones and tablets.
Lexmark Cloud Fleet Management
With Cloud Fleet Management, MSPs can remotely manage devices at customer locations.
Through this platform, technicians can:
- update firmware
- update applications
- change or configure settings
- troubleshoot issues
- retrieve page counts
- all from any location
If those capabilities work as advertised, they can likely help prevent onsite calls, and reduce time to resolution for many printer-related issues that are often difficult to troubleshoot remotely.
Lexmark Cloud Connector
Cloud document storage is quickly becoming the standard for many businesses. But managing that content -- and connectivity across a fleet of printers -- can be difficult. Through the Lexmark Cloud Connector, employees can access and print documents from Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and more. Users can also scan and upload to their cloud service of choice.
Lexmark Partner Program
The new cloud services arrive as Channel Chief Sammy Kinlaw attempts to jumpstart the company's partner program. Kinlaw joined Lexmark from Lenovo in February 2018. Although Lexmark has had some layoffs, Kinlaw expressed optimism about recurring revenue opportunities for partners during a ChannelE2E interview in July 2018.
