Green printing with security

ThinPrint, a leading provider of print solutions for distributed environments offers a solution for secure resource- and cost-saving Follow-me-printing.

Around the world, mountains of paper end up in the trash unused because users never retrieve a portion of their printouts from the printer. A waste of money and valuable resources. Oftentimes the forgotten documents also include security relevant printouts, such as employee contracts, which can fall into unauthorised hands at the printer. The print optimisation experts at ThinPrint promise a resource-saving and secure solution with their new Follow-me-printing software, which they will present in a preview version for the first time at CeBIT.

When the user launches a print job, he no longer has to choose from various printers within the application. Instead, he always uses the available Follow-me-printing printer. He can then go to any printer of his choice and start the printout via authentication. Authentication can be requested at the time required in three different ways: From a multifunction printer by user data input, by using a smartcard at the print box of the printer or via mobile phone at a network printer. ThinPrint solution's unique feature: For the first time ever, print jobs can be retrieved on a cell phone. The user sees his print jobs on the mobile phone display and can select or manage them with the keypad. This is an inexpensive alternative to hard copy printing that requires absolutely no additional hardware. Printers with displays, a thin client or a print box with smart card reader are also being considered as input devices. The company is cooperating with long-term OEM partners like SEH, OKI and RICOH to implement these solutions.

The Follow-me-printing solution enhances the print management solution continually improving since 1999, ThinPrint .print, which optimizes the print process through print data compression, simplified administration, connection-oriented bandwidth control, print job tracking and SSL-encrypted transmission of print data.

"Our Follow-me-printing solution is actually just a logical continuation of our goal to support companies in saving costs and resources with their print output. It reduces administration effort and also excellently fits into our Green IT strategy for the responsible handling of resources," says Charlotte Knzell (pictured), General Manager at ThinPrint .print. "Our printer virtualisation solutions not only save a company hardware; the new Follow-me-printing also allows them to concretely reduce their paper and toner usage."

About ThinPrint GmbH

ThinPrint specializes in mobile enterprise solutions and printing in distributed network architectures. The company's success is based on its print management solution, ThinPrint .print, which is successfully employed in companies of all sizes in all sectors around the globe. More than 500 major distributors and resellers in over 80 countries sell products made by ThinPrint GmbH.

Thanks to numerous partnerships, client components using patent-pending .print technology have been integrated into the terminals, printboxes, PDAs and mobile phones of several leading hardware producers. Strategic partnerships with ThinPrint play a special role in this endeavour, including BlackBerry (RIM), Bluetooth SIG, Citrix Systems, Inc., Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Lexmark International, Inc., Microsoft, Nokia, Orange, Palm, Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Symbian Ltd., VMware, Inc. and XPS Software GmbH.