In the most basic sense, wireless printing refers to print tasks that are sent from devices not physically connected to the printer. The concept has become popular in the consumer market, with companies such as Eastman Kodak Co. and Hewlett-Packard Co. pushing the technology. Recently, HP in particular has tried to migrate the consumer popularity of wireless printing to the corporate world.
Like other printer manufacturers, HP has offered wireless printers for the consumer market for some time. These printers generally work over WiFi connections, and are appealing to users who have more than one computer in the home, or just don’t want to bother with cables.
However the enterprise market is a little bit more complicated.
While some small- and medium-sized businesses are happy to just have a few wireless printers for an office, the concept of wireless printing in the business world usually refers to something much larger in scope.
Basically, wireless enterprise printing means being able to send a task – whether a text document, spreadsheet or PDF file – to a printer in any location from a device in any location.
For example, some of the most popular enterprise wireless printing options around today let employees send a task to a corporate printer directly from their smart phones.
In addition, enterprise wireless printing must be secure. A consumer might be content to send a task to a printer over an unsecured WiFi connection, but most businesses will want to make sure the data they send to printers will remain as secure as the data they send anywhere else. More often than not, that means encryption and password protection to ensure nobody snoops on the data being sent, and only the authorized person can collect the document from the printer.
So far, HP has been the most aggressive player in the enterprise wireless printing market, although some of the company’s offerings overlap with consumers.
For example, HP offers a smart phone app that lets users wirelessly print documents, attachments and other data on any one of thousands of printers worldwide, located in places such as FedEx Corp. offices and hotel business centres. Once a user selects a printer, he or she is given a code. That code essentially unlocks the print job, so only the person who knows the code can retrieve the document from the printer. More than 250,000 people have downloaded the BlackBerry version of the free app.
But while such a tool might be useful for an employee on the road who has to print something at the last minute, HP also provides a souped-up version of the software for enterprise-wide use. The enterprise version integrates with a company’s information technology infrastructure, ensuring the data being sent to remote printers never leaves the company’s secure network. The software also allows users to e-mail print jobs using the corporate e-mail system.
Because most companies – and especially small- and medium-sized businesses – aren’t keen on buying new hardware to support new wireless printing options, many manufacturers have tried to make their solutions as backward-compatible as possible. Most new printers already come with WiFi capability, but many wireless printing tools only require a printer be connected to a company’s computer network.
Still, there are many reasons why wireless printing may not take off. For one thing, some small- and medium-sized businesses simply don’t need the capability unless they have many offices sharing printed data, or employees who spend a lot of time out of the office but need to print documents regularly. Regardless of what remote printing tool is used, somebody eventually has to physically pick up the document from the printer, and, in many cases, it’s just as simple to print and pick up the document locally.
But perhaps the biggest hurdle standing in the way of wireless printing’s popularity is the uncertainty around printing itself. With the rise of powerful mobile devices that let users view and manipulate various file types, many companies are working hard to minimize printing of any kind.
Indeed, some of the other tools that are revolutionizing the wireless office – collaborative software, video-conferencing and cloud storage – may well render wireless printing unnecessary.
If manufacturers such as HP are to convince small and-medium-sized businesses to adopt wireless printing, they must show its usefulness – or at least make it very cheap to implement.
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