HP’s Enterprise Printing Blog : Web Jetadmin

Smart Tech Leaders Secure Printers

sherristuart — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:54:00 GMT

Mike Feldman
Vice President and General Manager
Enterprise Sales and Services
IPG-Americas

We know that businesses spend untold time and money waging war daily against PC and network attacks. Smart CIOs, IT and facility managers are now looking beyond disk drives and databases, and beginning to tackle the huge challenge of securing business documents, printer fleets and the information streaming through their document workflow systems. Less obvious? Yes - but also critical to the health and welfare of your corporation.

At HP, we are beginning to see our more forward-thinking customers include document security within their RFPs. These technology leaders are just like you - faced with shrinking budgets and hard decisions: Where do I cut? Where do I spend? Faced with these hard choices, it is clear to me that the smart ones are placing a premium on security of their entire IT environment – including their imaging and printing infrastructure. They know that it is imperative that the information flowing through their enterprise printing fleet is secure.

If you haven’t started to address this nagging concern, I simply do not think you can afford to lag behind any longer.

The resources are in place to help guide you through the process.

HP can help you address imaging and printing security threats, risks and vulnerabilities, compliance and privacy concerns, and how to implement a secure environment. As a first step, I urge you to visit the HP site dedicated to imaging and printing security.

Also, Gartner analyst Don Dixon has released a new report, “Securing Your MFP and Printer Is More Relevant Than Ever,”* a great overview of the steps enterprises can take to alleviate document security concerns. I urge you all to take a look.

*Gartner - Publication Date: 12 June 2009 ID Number: G00168086

Technorati Tags: Secure printing,Enterprise printing,Secure business documents,Printing solutions,Printing Compliance

Connecting with Enterprise Customers

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:16:00 GMT

Mike Feldman
VP, IPG Global Enterprise Business

I am in the nation’s capital this week (actually Georgetown but very close to DC and on Pennsylvania Street) with our East Coast Enterprise Customer Advisory Council (EAC). There is nothing better than time spent with customers – staying on the ground with the issues and challenges they’re facing. And, it’s exciting for us – from the perspective of what HP has to offer – to help them manage the challenges, improve workflows and save money.

Our customers here are telling me that cost containment, green IT and green printing are still the hottest topics. Customers love HP’s Web Jetadmin and Univeral Print Driver and we are committed to providing a best-in-class experience with these important software platforms. Scanning is also on the rise and our customers are successfully replacing copiers with HP MFPs and in many cases, relying on HP’s Managed Print Services.

We are so lucky to have great large enterprise customers who will take 2 days out of their busy schedules on a regular basis to meet with us and give us invaluable feedback. Tomorrow we will cover the product portfolio and future direction as well as our green printing solutions. I am looking forward to more great feedback. These customers shape our investments and directions. Coming up next month we will be in Berlin, Germany and Calgary, Canada for more customer councils. On the road again – and enjoying every second of customer interaction.

Technorati tags: enterprise printing, hp, Hewlett Packard, universal print driver, web jetadmin, managed print services

Podcast from the International Spy Museum

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:02:00 GMT

David Murray
Enterprise Marketing Program Manager

I wanted to follow up Andy Stento's January 24, 2008 post "HP Technology Day Event at International Spy Museum" with some additional insight via a podcast.

I also attended the event and had an opportunity to interview one of the event’s keynote presenters, HP MFP Product Manager, Jim Montgomery. If you tune into the podcast, you can learn more about what Jim presented in terms of discussing industry trends like the "paperless office" and the convergence of technologies and how these trends are shaping HP's strategies in developing MFPs and printer security solutions.

Technorati tags: enterprise printing, edgeline, edgeline technology, hp, Hewlett Packard, multi-function printer, MFP

HP Technology Day Event at International Spy Museum

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:55:00 GMT

Andy Stento
US IPG Enterprise Marketing Director

Over 100 Public Sector customers braved the snowy weather in our nation's capital yesterday to hear the latest from HP's Imaging and Printing group. I was there also - and pleased to see the enthusiastic response to HP's presentations on the recently introduced HP CM8060 MFP with Edgeline Technology, Secure Printing, and Print Management offerings. Several of the customers I spoke with confirmed that they are printing more - and copying less in the office - as reported by IDC's continued tracking of this office trend. Do you see this playing out in your office as well? And how is this trend impacting your office equipment procurement decisions? It was also affirming to hear that customers are using their MFP devices primarily for 8.5 x 11 printing, as also reported by IDC, and, that customers are truly recognizing that many of their large departmental devices and features are largely underutilized causing them to commit to smaller, printing centric MFP devices upon lease expiration of their existing copiers.

IDC's research has played a large role in HP's MFP product development strategy and, thankfully, customers have responded enthusiastically to our approach of providing "printer based" MFPs that have the right feature set to handle the majority of our customers’ print, copy, fax and scanning needs at breakthrough prices. The recently announced HP CM8060 MFP with Edgeline Technology is the latest addition to HP's MFP product lineup. It was fun to see customers’ reactions to the disruptive color pricing for this device, as well as the response to the award-winning control panel - including live video for end-user friendly diagnosing of problems should they occur. Have you seen this product? If not, I'd highly recommend visiting http://www.hp.com/go/edgeline to learn more about this amazing MFP, and potentially even order a demonstration if you are in the market for a breakthrough, departmental color device.

Changing gears, I was duly impressed with the number of Federal, State and Educational customers who have internalized the risk that unsecured network printers and MFPs can play and have already taken action to secure these devices on their network. How is your organization addressing this security risk? Are your printing and MFP devices secure? As noted in this Computer World article, security breaches through network based peripherals are becoming more and more prevalent.

Finally, several customers mentioned to me yesterday how they are managing their printing environments more efficiently with HP's print management tools - including the recently updated HP Web JetAdmin 10.0 and HP’s Universal Print Driver. HP’s Web JetAdmin is powerful management software that can alleviate the majority of printing related help desk calls that your IT organization receives - so check it out and download it for free. In addition, Universal Print Driver will free up your organization from the task of managing multiple print drivers. I'd encourage you to check out this innovative application for consolidating your printer drivers into one. Let us know what you think.

Technorati tags: enterprise printing, edgeline, edgeline technology, hp, Hewlett Packard, multi-function printer, MFP, web jet admin, universal print driver

Getting the Best Performance from Web Jetadmin 10.0

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:50:00 GMT

Rick Aldinger

Worldwide Business Development Manager for HP’s Imaging & Printing Group

I just returned from the HP Technology Conference and saw firsthand the excitement and expectations around HP Web Jetadmin 10x. Customers who have already installed the application are impressed by how much time they are saving by using this new version, and many people are eager to see for themselves how the improvements we made will affect their work day.

We released this version June 20^thand it is available for download on our website. I think it’s worth your time to watch the flash demo, which will give you with a quick overview of the product and some of its features.

In my last post, I shared some of the ease of use benefits that you should see using HP Web Jetadmin 10x. I’d love to hear your initial thoughts. Do you find the product more intuitive and easier to navigate, and is the “Help” system is a more useful resource?

We’ve also made some great strides with regard to performance; specifically when navigating from view to view or folder to folder inside the application. These improvements became possible when we moved to a single database, .Net, and when we allowed the client to perform more of the user interface functionality (there is a small app that gets downloaded to the client when running the application remotely).

In order to get optimal performance, though, it’s important to install Web Jetadmin 10.0 on a suitable workstation. I have seen some customers running the application on a machine with a 1.2 GHz processor, 512 MB of memory and 40 GB disk drive, and while it will certainly work, the performance will not be as impressive as most of you would like it to be. Ideally, you need at least a 2.4 GHz processor with 1GB of memory and an 80 GB disk drive for the server application. The same is true for the client side of the house. You want to be running on at least a 1.8 GHZ processor with 1 GB of memory. Web Jetadmin 10.0 will also take advantage of a dual core processor. I just finished loading up a 2.4 GHZ machine with 2 GB of memory. With 16,000 devices and anywhere from 1 to 15 users, performance was acceptable. No issues occurred when I moved from the discovery folder to the device list and response was within seconds.

And remember, with any ‘real time’ application, the network can, and will, play a role in performance. There is a very good whitepaper, “Best Practices for Managing your Assets”, that contains a section about application performance and some of the things you can expect to see.

While I was at the technology conference, it was great to talk with people face to face about Web Jetadmin 10x. But I’d also like to hear from all of you about your experiences. Please use the comment link below to let me know about any performance improvements you have seen or any issues or questions that have come up since upgrading to 10.0.

Technorati Tags: enterprise printing, hp, Hewlett Packard, MFP, Web Jetadmin, hp technology conference

Manage Your Printing Environment with Web Jetadmin 10.0

Anonymous — Fri, 25 May 2007 17:26:00 GMT

Rick Aldinger
WW Business Development Manager for HP’s Imaging & Printing Group

When you work for HP, you meet a lot of people from different industries, disciplines and walks of life. And when you’re fortunate enough to have an authentic conversation, to be able to ask pointed questions, to listen, and to get answers about what is important to customers, you learn a lot about them as individuals, what works for their business, and just as importantly, what doesn’t work.

HP recently had conversations with more than 100 of our best enterprise customers. And what we heard time and again is you want us to talk with you; that you want us to get to know your business -- to become a partner in making your business better, more efficient, and more profitable by solving problems.

I am not sure how many of you are familiar with managing your printers or even if you want to know. (It’s OK, most business people don’t think about printers unless there’s a problem. The printers just work, and there’s no need to really manage them. After all, they are printers, right?) Well, I’m not sure your business really has that luxury anymore.

I have found out talking with customers that usually there is someone in your organization struggles with the complexity of printing (MFPs, color control, security, standardized configurations, to name a few), and that someone works hard to understand how many printers you have, or the types of printers, or how those assets are utilized or if they can be remotely configured, and how to troubleshoot the printers remotely.

I would like to share with you best practices, tips and ways to help you solve these problems and make printing an asset and competitive advantage for your business. A good first step is to share how HP can help you manage your printing environment.

It starts with a printing software solution called Web Jetadmin. It’s been around for 10 years now, and we just recently introduced a new version that takes printer fleet administration and management to an all new level. Web Jetadmin 10.0 comes with robust new features for remote deployment, problem reporting and resolution, proactive management, enhanced security and supplies management, and integration with MS Active Directory Services.

The early reviews of Web Jetadmin 10.0 that I’ve seen have been very positive. And while good reviews are good news, it’s more important for me – and HP -- to hear that this release will make a big difference in someone’s business. I have good news there too: My phone has been ringing steadily with customers calling to find out more about this software.

HP Web Jetadmin 10.0 has all the benefits of Web Jetadmin 8x, but with added features that make it even easier to work with. Users can now:

Drag and drop printers to a group
Right click to perform a wide range of tasks (including adding a device to a group, start a configuration, set alerts, and more)
Easily resize screens
Utilize wizards and searchable help functions

And these features just scratch the surface of what this revamped tool can do, but more importantly is what Web Jetadmin 10.0 will do to improve your company’s bottom line. Over the next few months, I’d like to talk with you about what these new benefits can do for managing your enterprise printers and more specifically, what they mean for you in your daily work life.

(But if you want to start today, you can learn more about HP's Print & Imaging Management Solution, on HP Web Jetadmin, where you will find all kinds of information about our current solution, whitepapers, training schedules, and more.)

Please use the comment link below to ask me questions about Web Jetadmin or to let me know what printing issues you’d like to talk about in this blog. I look forward to you joining the conversation!

Blogger Rick Aldinger is Worldwide Business Development Manager for HP’s Imaging & Printing Group, Print Management Solutions.

enterprise printing, hp, Hewlett Packard, MFP, Web Jetadmin