Cloud Printing

What is Cloud Printing, I understand saving docs to the Cloud, but not sure about the printing aspect of it.

Thanx

Like Color1 said..."for lack of a better term" Cloud printing being a coined term for the act of printing "to the cloud" rather than to a specific printer and then later retrieving the print job from "the cloud" by downloading it to a printer here on earth that you don't otherwise have any connection to.

And how could this come in handy to someone or some company?

Here's H-P's take on the subject

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsr...ss/2010/100607b.html

But Old Glory does sum it up nicely.

Thanks for sharing.
Obviously HP has started the ball rolling and in our big enterprise accounts,I feel this will become very important. This appears to be in the infancey stage, so "Cloud Printing" may not be an accurate title. My contact is all about saving resources, and creating an environment that saves on help desk support, especially in a company with world wide prescence.

Indeed Color1, we've got a pretty good story to tell. Hot Spot capabilities have been here for what, two years now, from Ricoh?

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck:
Here's H-P's take on the subject

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsr...ss/2010/100607b.html

But Old Glory does sum it up nicely.

Is there a cost for this service?

Go to:

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ente..._go/eprintenterprise

Select "How to get . . . " Yes there's a cost at the enterprise level but at local retail level who knows. WiFi's becoming print capable.

Thanks for the info, it is greatly appreciated.
It seems that HP is leading in this effort, and they appear to have levels of the product depending on the application. Ricoh seems to be doing an all or nothing approach, the same with Lexmark. Lexmark has a Global application that has a lot of neat features, the problem lies in the involvment of the local dealer. Lexmark wants to come in and do the analysis and launch of the product and is unwilling to even ball park a price on the solution. Past experience tells me that it is a pricey solution when that occurs. It will be interesting to see how this moves forward.

Have you all sold hotspot-enabled MFPs or any other vendor's MFPs with mobile or cloud-printing capabilities.

Any take aways from the dealer or client perspective?

I currently have 5 hot spot enabled mfp's in use at one account and we have another 5 on order for them. They are extremely happy with the concept and the flexibility it has offered them. The actual units were installed in 2010 and we have added the "hot spot" option this year. The kit comes with stickers, and end user instructions on how to use. The customer seems to be very pleased with units.

Color1

What type of account has the 5 enabled mfp's and how are they using the hot spot?

And how much do the Hotspot options and subscriptions cost?

Is there a subscription fee per device?

The browser cost is approximately $700.00 and a three year subscribtion is around $900.00. You
get one year with the browser. You do need one per device. When you install this at the unit you will also have to have to IP addresses,one for the MFP and one for the browser option.

Please if you don't mind, why would mail2print not work with the account?

I am not familiar with mail2print. Do you have any experience with accounts using this?

If you're a Ricoh dealer, all of the new machines come with mail2print. In order to use this feature you have to install the PSIII option. You then give the mfp an email address.

So, if I had a file that was emailed to me on my blackberry and I needed to print it, I could send the file to my mfp and it would print the document.

If there are multiple attachments, it will only print the first one and it will not print compressed files, just a thought.

Art

Thanks for the update, it would be nice if Ricoh or specifically our Ricoh/Savin support team would do a better job educating us on these new features. It is one thing to mention the capability in a product launch, but real world application scenarios would be more advantagous. Thank you for your effortts to keep all of us better informed.

NP, thanx, what type of account did you have the 5 Hot Spot enabled MFP's in and what was the main benefit for them? I'm trying to learn more also.

This is an international company, with thier home office in our territory, one of the few for our area. Their main campus is large and spread out. They have a number of employees who work from home and are not always at the office. They have a huge mobile workforce. Not that the "hot spot" has been a perfect solution, but, it has allowed them flexibilities that they didn't have before. This company is looking more toward "Cloud" functionality for a lot of their document flow. I have a feeling that this is just the beginning. We are currently working with the App2me features and printing from thier smart phones, and I pads. This a very much a learning experience for all of us.