Print Strategies Adopted
dwaldron February 20th, 2009
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) has conducted a review of print operations and print infrastructure on campus. The goal of this review was to develop strategies to enhance print services for the campus community, to realize efficiencies within OIT in terms of delivering and supporting these services, to reduce the environmental impact of print operations in line with the College’s recently adopted Commitment to Environmental Stewardship, and to reduce associated costs. As a result of this review, OIT has adopted four strategies. These are:
- to encourage the shift of print traffic away from LaserJets and similar single-purpose devices toward more cost effective multifunction devices
- to deploy devices that are energy efficient, and that support duplex printing and other features that reduce paper usage
- to reduce the number of LaserJets and similar devices on-campus
- to deploy the Pharos print management system across the entire campus
OIT intends to implement these strategies on a building-by-building basis. Mary Schantz, Director of User Services, will work with the Building and Administrative Coordinators in each building to analyze needs and to identify solutions and configurations that satisfy those needs within the context of our newly adopted strategies.
The College currently has a lease agreement with MT Business Technologies to provide 52 multifunction devices (printer/copiers) to campus. In conjunction with the most recent renewal of this contract, the College ensured that all these devices are Energy Star compliant, support duplex printing and offer scan-to-email functionality. MT also provides support and maintenance for 110 HP LaserJet printers owned by the College. Our fleet of LaserJets is aging, does not provide environmentally friendly functions like duplex printing, and does not provide other convenient services like scan-to-email. In addition, the per-printed-page cost associated with LaserJets exceeds that of multifunction devices. These facts, and the desire to avoid the significant costs associated with replacing aging LaserJets, provide the rationale for encouraging a shift toward multifunction devices and reducing the number of LaserJets through consolidation and the elimination of redundancy.
Currently, the College does not have a standard print management tool. Four different print systems are in use—Novell, IP, Appletalk and Pharos. The lack of a standard complicates print support. OIT believes that, of the four systems currently in use, Pharos offers the feature set most consistent with our goal of providing quality print service in ways that permit us to reduce the impact on the environment and lower costs. Pharos provides tools that make it possible to create user-friendly installation packages, remotely manage print queues and monitor the level of activity and associated resource usage.
OIT is keenly aware that our academic mission is dependent upon a quality, reliable print service. The outlined strategies are designed to permit us to provide such service in ways that are more consistent with environmental and financial realities.