In our last blog, we looked at the difference between private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

While there are many benefits to a private cloud, the increased cost automatically rules it out for some businesses. However, if you’re one of those businesses, there’s no need to worry, as we have PaperCut Hive. PaperCut Hive enables us to give you the power to print from anywhere, to any printer within your business using a public cloud.

What is PaperCut Hive?

PaperCut Hive is hosted on PaperCut’s own servers, which means you don’t need to worry about investing in and maintaining servers or finding the space to house them.

There are many reasons why we chose to work with PaperCut Hive to facilitate cloud-based printing for those customers who wish to use Public Cloud hosting. PaperCut Hive creates a mesh between the devices owned by your organisation. It uses this mesh to send your documents and data for printing (unless you are offsite and relying on PaperCut’s cloud printing function). With the documents themselves safely tucked up inside your company’s own mesh environment, only the printing instructions such as how many pages, what colour and how many copies are sent to the cloud, keeping your data safe, while managing the data load effectively.

With PaperCut Hive, your printing goes to a single print queue and then is released either with the user’s mobile phone, or the touchscreen for the multi-function printer or device.

PaperCut works with every brand of printer including Canon, Epson, HP, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Lexmark, Ricoh and more. This enables us to keep the flexibility that we currently offer our clients, so we can still recommend the best devices for our clients, without restrictions from the cloud-printing software.

Advantages of using PaperCut Hive

There are plenty of ways PaperCut Hive benefits the security, protection and sustainability of your printed documents. With PaperCut Hive, you can:

  • Control when users can print, copy and scan with access control which authenticates users at the MFD.
  • Ensure print jobs are released only to their rightful owner with Secure Release which requires an identity card, mobile device or the MFD touchscreen to release print jobs.
  • Promote responsible document handling with watermarks with the data owner’s name or digital signature are applied to.
  • Manage your printing budget more effectively as pull printing means there are no uncollected print jobs.
  • Do your bit for the environment by converting your printing output into planting trees with PaperCut Grows.
  • Get visibility of copying and scanning projects as well as printing projects.
  • Get started quickly and easily with Automatic Print Discovery.

PaperCut Hive is a great way to keep your printed documents safe and manage your printing effectively. If you want to take advantage of the benefits of a private cloud while still using the PaperCut system PaperCut have software solutions that will work in a private environment too and, as a PaperCut partner, we can get you up and running in no time. Have a chat with our sales team to discuss your business’s needs and learn how ASL Group can help you improve your sustainability, save time and tighten your data protection.