Ask the Flist: Enterprise-scale printing?

[andygates]

We've got 5000 Windows desktops and a Windows 2003 Enterprise two-node print cluster.  The print cluster carries 850 printers in 60 models from 10 manufacturors.

It's creaking.  It's creaking particularly because HP (our main supplier) drivers share components and are crappy desktop-grade filth.  Every so often a change to one printer's spec will cascade through the whole model line or worse, the whole brand.  Joy is unfolding, from the heavens, like a lotus blossom of migraine flashes.

Do you do enterprise-scale printing?  How the hell do you keep this ball of string tight? 

Comments

[skean.livejournal.com]

I can't address the IT side of it really, but from a business side:

You've got a ratio of about 1 printer to 5.88 desktops. We operate at a ratio of more than 1:20. Project a couple of years ago got rid of lots of little different sorts of printers, and introduced a high capacity multi function floor printer. One per floor or wing, roughly. The C-level's still have a local desktop printer each, but that's about it.

Added benefits are cost control, confidentiality and reduction in waste printing. The printer can be programmed to work on your logon smartcard, a departmental budget code, or left open access. Confidentiality encouraged, as it is in a seperate, central location - printing off stuff a couple of minutes away means risk of discovery of naughtiness much higher. Similarly, the longer walk discourages idle print offs.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That's outside my power, but it has been said (and attempted, many times). In a nutshell we'd have to force it through because there are too many 'ego printers' and the people who would have to push lack the drive to do so.

We do, to be fair, also have plenty of weird exceptions, speical reporting printers and consulting rooms with a printer each because it's mandated (so the bumf can be printed without breaking the consultation and showing the corridor the patient's gammy bits).

Believe me, if I was King of the Printers... ...but I'm just the Master of the Printers' Stables. I do the shovelling.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

AFAICT the usual approach is to contact a couple of major printer suppliers and say "We need 500 office-grade printers of no more than two models (mono and color), suitable for a total annual throughput of X pages with the highest per-printer amount being Y pages, with the lowest projected total cost of ownership over three years. This is a Request For Proposal/Tender. We will be comparing initial offers in four weeks from now, reviewing fine-tuning of existing offers at six weeks, and making a decision at eight weeks."

Sure, 500-ish printers plus associated three-year maintenance contracts and consumables isn't necessarily Super Major Deal size, but it's often enough for suppliers to give more than a passing thought to. Particularly if they think your organisation is prestigious enough to be mentioned in their future advertising, or worth taking a stab at just so the competition won't get the account.

[calum]

Lots of enterprise printers today support confidential printing - you print, then go to the printer, and log in to collect your printout.

You really are using way too many printers.

I'd suggest getting a company in to set up a managed print service. We use the Toshiba solution, but we'd have to really (being part of Toshiba). It is pretty good though.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Could some unnamed person, ooh, for example, do a cost analysis to show how much money (both directly, and in consumables and staff time) could be saved by switching to a new printing model?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Here is what happens: We do these things. Then someone points out that we have a load of good printers and no budget to just replace them all wholesale - that budget can go to clinical care. So we have a staggeringly long tail of old, obsolete horror (dot. matrix.) that, like my camper-van, is kept alive until it dies.

Meanwhile two years pass and all the models we bought go obsolete. And someone gets a special deal with a vendor. The face, and the palm, yea do they come together.

If I was King of Printers, I would wave a wand and give everyone Laserjet 4's. They were great.

I guess what I'm after is a Better Print Server. One that doesn't fall over all the time, has proper driver handling, and insane uptime. I have to deal with the hairball of devices because that's what we physically have.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Ah! Win 2008 printer driver isolation could be the puppy. See, upgrades to servers I can do. Truck-scale hardware raids, not so much.

Thanks for being my inflatable cactus.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Our swipes do doors. They don't do logons. Can we say "procurement fail"? Yes we can. Can we say "joined up thinking"? Absolutely. Can we say "arse from elbow"? "Piss-up in brewery"? You betcha.

It's like swimming upstream against massive organisational inertia.

[shifty-176.livejournal.com]

You *sure* you don't work where I do?

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Ah. Pity that the case for a complete hardware replacement can't be couched as an opportunity to save money over the next N years through reduced TCO, factoring in the money which could be made from selling the existing printers...

[carldem.livejournal.com]

thats why you have in-house tech-gimps. and pay them sfa. makes up for real planning and gear.

Couldn't say much w/o looking at your volumes, geometries.
f-i Can some models be placed in certain predictable areas? (both physically & logically).

If you can Kill All The Orphans. A loose paper clip is great for old style D-M that parts can't be gotted for. A bit of residue remover (alcohol) in a judious spot fixes any further calibration issues on some older HP inkjets.
PS please destruct this message after use.
Nothing stops budget whines like a functioning system.