PrintIT Reseller - issue 72

01732 759725 CLOUD 20 Lexmark recently announced its Cloud Print Management (CPM) offering is now available to channel partners. Martin Fairman, UK and Ireland Managing Director, explains how CPM is a real differentiator for Lexmark dealers Lexmark makes cloud print management available to partners “Customers of all sizes are moving business processes to the cloud to simplify management, lower costs and enhance collaboration. There's a lot of transformation in the marketplace, and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the highest segment in the cloud market. Gartner predicts a growth of 24 per cent year over year, to reach $50bn in 2020, so it’s a great time for us to open our CPM platform to channel partners,” he said. Many organisations are focused on eliminating server infrastructure, implementing new technologies and improving security. With CPM, Lexmark partners can now provide that same level of optimisation when it comes to print, eliminating the burden of printing infrastructure and manual, onsite management. Security first Security has long been a key tenet across Lexmark’s technology portfolio, and it has taken time to ensure CPM’s security was robust before opening it up to the channel. “Security is the most important thing and that's why it's probably taken us longer to launch to the channel, as we wanted to ensure it is absolutely secure when it goes into the cloud,” Fairman explained. Lexmark’s cloud-based design is simple to deploy and easy to use, providing customers with new levels of visibility and document security. Lexmark partners can help their customers adopt a stronger approach to document and device security, close document security gaps with secure print release, and access around-the-clock cloud server monitoring. “CPM is a real differentiator, it provides an opportunity for our partners to have a different conversation with customers,” he said. “This true cloud offering equips them to provide higher levels of service more profitably through the cloud. It also aligns customer conversations with beyond the box initiatives.“ Time and cost savings End customers will benefit from a reduction in the time needed to maintain IT infrastructure and the ability to better manage their printing estates. With print managed in the cloud, there’s no requirement to fund and manage physical print servers onsite, “There will be a significant cost reduction for end-users, both in terms of infrastructure but also in the IT resource required to monitor, manage and maintain the print estate,” Fairman explained, adding: “Plus, there is also security to worry about if servers are onsite as well, CPM addresses that, providing additional peace of mind.” With CPM, instead of sending documents through a print server to a designated print device where the pages sit out in public view until they are retrieved, they are transferred to the Lexmark Cloud where they are held in a personal queue until the user authenticates at the device. “Another key advantage of our cloud is that it can connect to multiple systems that customers are already used to using such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and OneDrive. Documents can be pulled from a computer, tablet or smartphone securely to any connected Lexmark printer around the world. This means faster, more secure cloud-based printing, with less burden on IT resources,” Fairman said. Real-time analytics provide insights that help customers understand and improve end-user behaviour. In addition, easy-to-adopt technology can leverage the cloud providers and mobile processes customers have already implemented in Lexmark has enjoyed success with CPM among enterprise customers and launched it to US channel partners at the end of February. Fairman said that cloud and digital transformation are hot topics for customers right now and partners have been asking for a solution that will enable them to leverage cloud technology to eliminate costly on- premise infrastructure and provide cloud-based, effortless secure print release to their customers, for some time.