A matter of time

Cloud computing is justifiably a key business driver for the future. It is relatively easy to see why, when one considers the benefits that can be achieved in terms of reduced overall computing costs through centralisation.

Cloud-based MPS is still in its infancy.

Rabin Ram is MD of the Xerox division at Bytes Document Solutions.

Cloud-based products and services can reduce the costs of infrastructure and support skills needed to deploy high-value systems. They can reduce capital expenditure, defer expenditure to the operational component of the balance sheet, and bring technology decisions closer to business alignment. In addition, they change the way the IT department thinks in terms of its technology acquisition: where a decision may have been deferred for 12 to 18 months, it can be made on the fly.

Businesses are as focused as ever on reducing costs and outsourcing non-core functions. This is entirely in line with the Crossing the Chasm model, which indicates best practice is to focus on the core and leave all peripheral business to specialists. In this regard, cloud computing offers a secure, affordable and productive format for delivering high-value business services without having to incur the traditional costs for this kind of service.

Mobility and cloud computing go hand-in-hand in delivering the right information to the right people at the right time. In the knowledge space, relevance and speed of action are critical to being competitive. The cloud offers these as well as fundamental benefits in terms of business continuity, supportability, security and ease of use.

Supplementary technologies such as virtualisation and increased bandwidth mean that cloud-based services have become an attractive platform for technology-enabled business process outsourcing.

Managed print services (MPS) is a way that businesses can focus on their core business activity through outsourcing the management of their print technology. Therefore, MPS customers stand to benefit from the advantages of cloud computing. Cloud-based MPS is still in its infancy, but promises to deliver all the benefits associated with the cloud.

Among these benefits, companies will no longer need to worry about managing printers and the associated infrastructure and support costs, as these services can be provided remotely. The alleviation of duplicated support infrastructure will ultimately mean a cost saving to customers, and may also mean that MPS can actually become truly vendor-agnostic. Customers need no longer be tied into seemingly endless contracts, which are often skewed towards the vendor.

The cloud offers the prospect of computing from any device, anywhere, to any other device, elsewhere, and this includes printers. In time, users will be able to access a printer, anywhere that they are permitted to use, with just about any device, including smartphones, iPods, tablets and other untethered devices. Features such as printing to multifunction devices from mobile devices, follow-me-printing (to anywhere on any network) and scanning to and from cloud-based document repositories and corporate social networks will revolutionise the way users interact with printing devices.

Not everyone is sold on the idea of cloud-based MPS. Certain market commentators have poured cold water on the notion of cloud-based printing, citing the difficulty of finding the nearest printer, rendering documents accurately on small displays, and more.

An interesting feature to consider is the level of infrastructure required to deliver social media. Facebook, for instance, is said to use more than 40 000 servers in order to provide its users with uninterrupted social networking service.

Seemingly, the barriers to entry are much less technological than they are on mindset. Issues such as traditional definitions of network security, appropriate Internet capacity and legacy service level agreement structures will need to be addressed before companies can realise the benefits of cloud computing not only for MPS, but all cloud computing opportunities.

MPS is in itself an innovative and increasingly progressive form of outsourcing. Cloud computing brings a canvas for radical change and advancement in the field of printing, and implies an evolution of MPS into service-based computing.

MPS suppliers are already breaking down the old barriers and reaching printing devices on various networks, in multiple locations, from mobile devices, concurrently and in real-time. It is only a matter of time until printing via the cloud becomes not just a possibility, but a daily reality.