Some of Plus Technologies‘ customers may be looking at software solutions designed to eliminate print servers and simplify queue management for simplicity let’s call this “eliminate print server software” or EPSW for short. If you are looking at such software it may be useful to note that there are differences between that kind of solution and OM Plus.

Manage the Print Queue vs Manage the Print Queue and the Print Job EPSW software is focused on managing the print queue. It will not manage the print job itself. To manage the print job they rely on the native operating system print spooler which have major limitations. The elimination of print servers means direct IP print with no print servers to handle failures, statistics, etc. EPSW will usually also require installation on every user workstation.

OM Plus is print spooler software that will ingest jobs from multiple source systems, manage the delivery process, and bi-directionally talk to the printers to confirm print as well as manage the queues. A server based print spooling system provides a centralized management tool set, elegant error recovery, scalability ot overcome Windows limitations, connectors to backend EMR/ERP systems, system wide statistics, and much more.

Pull Print
EPSW software is focused on workstation based printing and is not as capable for back-end printing from ERP, EMR systems like SAP, Epic, etc. In order to successfully operationalize pull print from Epic (for example) the Epic system needs to pass the user ID over to the pull print system. This is not available in the EPSW systems we have seen making it unable to release jobs from those systems. OM Plus is optimized for back-end ERP/EMR systems and is able to capture and use this info for pull print (MPD). In addition, OM Plus has connectors to popular authentication systems (eg Imprivata) which we have not seen with EPSW systems.

Print Statistics
We have not seen where EPSW software products have an ability to accumulate and report print, copy, scan statistics. OM Plus Stats Manager is built for this and can capture workstation as well as back-end print statistics including the user and device based stats.

Spooling Features
Since EPSW systems do not provide document delivery capabilities (they rely on native spoolers) they are not able provide enhanced spooling features such as centralized control, print confirmation to the tray, notification, auto load-balancing, audit tools, trouble shooting tools. intelligent context based routing, integration and management of e-forms tools, etc.

Lack of Unix/Linx Support
Since the EPSW systems we have seen are focused on workstation based printing they lack of support for Linux or Unix servers. If print is created in a Unix/Linux environment EPSW systems will not be a benefit.

Printing to Remote Locations
Print job delivery is not provided in EPSW systems. Therefore delivery of print over the internet is not managed at all. OM Plus with its i-Sat option is purpose built to safely deliver back-end (ERP/EMR) system documents over the internet to remote locations. OMP i-Sat has a remote plug-and-play appliance that requires no technical expertise to manage and the i-Sat system can alleviate the need for VPN.

For more information, contact Plus Technologies