Your Mobile Majestyof File and Print

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Article ReprintYour Mobile Majesty of File and Print

Introduction

We know this article’s cover title is a little bold, but we are truly founding royalty in the world of file andprint. And there are some very good reasons why we deserve to keep the crown.
First, and very importantly, we’ve been doing this a long time. For thirty
years, in fact, we have been working in file and print solutions. In all thattime, files and printed documents haven’t changed much, so while thedevices we use are different (and much smaller), the fundamentals remain the same. Though a few other file and print competitors have beenaround for years, many more are barely out of diapers. Our experiencegives us an edge.
Perhaps because they’re so young, many file and print vendors tackle
only pieces of the file and print area. We believe real solutions cover all
an organization’s needs, and this will become even more important in
the increasingly mobile workplace. That’s why our file and print solutions
work in both mobile and desktop environments. Think anyone out there
can challenge the throne? Let’s look at the two solutions and show just
how far the competition still has to go.

Filrcreated file servers would disagree. These consumer cloud solutions
suffer serious drawbacks.
The first and most obvious difference is the way these competitors
rely on the cloud. Much has been written about cloud security, or lackthereof, and past issues of Open Horizons Magazine have discussed
the benefits of OpenText™ Filr in this area. In a sentence: with Filr, yourfiles stay on premise where you control the security.
Another downside to consumer solutions is the file size limits they impose. Most limit files to 2 GB. This is fine for the average consumer, butfor large video files or enterprise data, 2 GB doesn’t cut it. Filr has nosuch limits.
Because these consumer solutions are created by smaller companies,
they don’t always support everything you’d like. Some don’t have iPhoneapps, others don’t have Android apps. Filr has them all.

The Consumer Cloud Competitors
Consumer cloud solutions like Dropbox say they invented file synchingand sharing, but we and the other enterprise software companies thatFinally, none of these offers user authentication. Yes, users would prefer
not to log in, and that’s fine for when they’re at home working with theirFigure 1. It doesn’t have to be either/or. With our solutions, users and IT can both get what they want.

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personal data. The office is different. Many companies will tell you that
security gets in the way of user convenience, and if you annoy your users, they’ll take matters into their own hands. We don’t believe you haveto choose between the two. You can enforce security and authentication while offering convenient, anywhere file access and sharing.

The Enterprise File Syncing Options
This is a much more varied bag of competitors. Syncplicity, Skydrive
Pro and Chatterbox could all fall into this category. Some are consumer
solutions dressed up in business suits, like Box, while others come fromlarge enterprise software corporations like Citrix. Still, many of them use
the cloud. We don’t need to go over the reasons this can be an issue.
The next failing of many solutions in this group is that they give you a big
empty box to put things in. It’s up to you to move your data. For an organization of any decent size, migrating all that data (and making sure it’s theright data to migrate) is a huge job—likely equivalent to many employees
working for weeks, if not months. With Filr, you’re integrating with thehome directories, network folders and personal data your users alreadyuse—right where it already exists. No moving or populating required.

And finally, we come to other on-premise, enterprise-focused file sharing providers. Even among the likes of Varonis, NetApp and AppSense,
Filr stands alone. No other vendor can match the ability of Filr to not
only let users share files, but collaborate on them. How often have you(or your users) shared a file with someone using a file sharing service,and then had to send a separate email to explain what the recipient wassupposed to do with it? With Filr, you can add comments on shared files
and keep the collaboration in a single tool. Filr also uniquely offers fulltext search that leverages each user’s access rights and permissions.
So far, the mobile majesty of file and print is looking pretty secure.

iPrintExisting enterprise printing solutions, like those from Microsoft and others, can do a lot of what OpenText™ iPrint can do, but not all of it. First,
many manage only one platform, operating system, or only desktops
and not mobile. iPrint can do it all.
Many enterprise solutions also require an administrator to install aprinter. Employees can email the same document to every person in
their address book without an admin. Why do they need an admin to getaccess to a printer? iPrint offers self-service printing. Any employee thatwants to print can find a printer and install it or connect to it without help.

Figure 2. On sign-in, Filr shows you all your files, ready and waiting. IT didn’t
have to move them there, and neither did you.

Other competitors offer hybrid cloud and on-premise solutions. You get
to use your own data center infrastructure—too bad you need to put files
in a special volume or section of your file structure to push those files tomobile devices. That means added management, and do you put theoriginal or a copy in the new repository? Where do you tell users to lookfor it? And how do you reconcile the version control issues that inevitably
result from multiple copies of the same data in different places?

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Figure 3. Users can pick and install their own printers without help from IT3

Connect with Us
OpenText CEO Mark Barrenechea’s blog

Other competitors offer hybrid cloud and on-premise solutions. You get
to use your own data center infrastructure—too bad you need to put
files in a special volume or section of your file structure to push thosefiles to mobile devices. That means added management, and do you put
the original or a copy in the new repository? Where do you tell users tolook for it? And how do you reconcile the version control issues that inevitably result from multiple copies of the same data in different places?

The Mobile Print Solutions
Sending corporate data to the cloud creates compliance and security
issues: you know that. Are there other reasons not to use the mobile
print solutions available today? Well, like many of the consumer file solutions, mobile print solutions are often the creations of small, young
companies. They don’t have the resources to offer support for multiple
platforms or printers, and certainly can’t offer enterprise-class maintenance and consulting.

Many of these solutions also require new printers (like AirPrint-capable
printers). This creates the same problem as the hardware requirementsof the enterprise-class solutions.
Even if one of these mobile print solutions were to meet all your needs,
what it won’t do is manage your desktop printing. That means your ITteam needs to use two different dashboards for print management.
They may even need to reconfigure your existing print environment.
iPrint manages everything in one place, and you can install it without
modifying your existing print configurations.
Finally, while buying an AirPrint-capable printer might allow one department to go mobile with their printing, that strategy doesn’t scale easily
or inexpensively for an entire organization, and neither do most of themobile print solutions available. iPrint scales to handle any number ofdesktops, laptops or mobile devices, and even different office locations
around the world.
After looking at all these different solutions, it appears that a truly mobile,
enterprise-class solution for file and print really is a majestic thing. We
are happy to be the file and print royalty offering that solution. With Filrand iPrint you can offer file synching, sharing and printing to employeeson the go while maintaining your current high standards for security
and accountability.
All hail the mobile majesty of file and print.
Learn more at
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Figure 4. The iPrint management page, showing two printers ready for either
AirPrint or other mobile printing.

272-000002-001 | O | 06/23 | © 2023 Open Text