Printer Monitoring reduces downtime saving time and money

Modern Multi functional printers adds new built in features like scanning, direct email, professional color printing in all sizes, direct fax, ftp services etc. This is all great, it does however introduce a whole set of new parameters that can effect the individual services on the printer and can potentially set the printer out of operations. op5 Monitor can be used to gain control over the printers sending alarms when problems arises and notification when paper or in needs attention.

Modern printers introduces new challenges!

The modern feature rich multi-purpose printer stations requires direct access to potentially a list of services related to the actual printer.

For example:

• Connectivity via local and/or central switches
• Directory services such as Microsoft AD or similar
• DHCP server
• Application Servers
• Print Servers

A failure in any of the above components could directly effect the services produced by the multifunctional printer.

”30-40% of all help-desk calls are printer related” – Gartner Group

But are they really? Or is it so that the real problem causing different printer services to fail actually are caused by something else, something that the printer is depending on?

What happens when the printer is down?

The pure volume in printer related problems are often solved by outsourcing the whole printer process. This approach can be very costly and many times the problem analysis from the printing partner concludes that the printer is operational and the actual problem causing the downtime was generated by “something else” i.e. not the printer itself. This conclusion will generate two issues:

1. An invoice from the service partner as the problem was not printer related
2. Potentially longer downtime of the printer as the core problem was never detected so its not until the printer technician rules out the printer that the internal IT starts to identify the actual root cause to the problem.

Understanding what the root cause is and getting a direct notification on effected services such as the printers, saves time and money and perhaps most important, keeps the end users productive and a lot happier.

Active monitoring of Multi Service Printers

The power of multi-service monitoring with automatic alarms, notifications and professional service level reports are extremely efficient, even at a relatively small number of printers. The ease of use and support for all brand printers makes the op5 Monitoring system very versatile.

Example of the status overview for the service “printer-sth”.

List of services included for basic printer monitoring

• FTP running and response time
• Http/https service and response time
• Ping
• Telnet
• Toner levels
• Paper levels
• Counters for total print, copies color and black/white, papers sizes.*

* = depending on manufacture

All services can be set up for low or high values and when breached alarms will be generated via sms or email. All data can be graphed by day, week or monthly views for trend analysis.

Reports

Automatic availability report showing uptime and exact time frames on individual printers or groups of printers.

Simple yet easy to read and understand Service Level follow up reports greatly reduces discussions and assures that responsible service engineers delivers the service you are paying for.

Summary of Printer Monitoring

The new generation of advanced multifunction printers adds important services to the organization. They do however introduce a challenge of maintaining high uptime for the services. op5 Monitor introduces a simple and automated way to stay in control of printers and give the administrator the overall picture that greatly reduces mean time to repair, increase the general uptime and avoiding unnecessary service costs from the printer service partner.