• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Software Shelf's April E-Update Release for Print Manager Plus Deploys Printing Bandwidth Reporting Functionality to Improve Printing and Network Performance

Posted on: Thursday, 5 April 2007, 06:00 CDT

Software Shelf today announced the release of multiple device and user bandwidth reporting for Print Manager Plus® (PMP) print management software through its Live E-update Service. The Live E-update seamlessly integrates this newest package of reports into PMP installations from small to Fortune 100 networks with the click of a button.

Insufficient bandwidth is a common issue among network engineers. Printing is usually one of the main contributors to this problem, as documents of even moderate size can choke bandwidth, causing lost print jobs and slow application performance.

The new PMP bandwidth reports makes it possible to know and control print usage to distribute printing functionality throughout the network, increase reliability, discover points of failure, denote printers to upgrade, minimize business disruption due to printing and network bandwidth overload and lower the total cost of ownership.

Software Shelf President Bill Feeley says, "PMP's new bandwidth reports package is an important tool for any organization. With our E-update service we enable our customers to get the newest most proven features without having to wait for major upgrades. We listen attentively to customers. Their loyalty is important to us. We strive to give them what they need most with speed -- our E-update service is how we deliver the solutions they most need with speed."

Feeley explained, "Customers wanted a tool within PMP to help them solve situations where slow print jobs were causing user frustration, reducing productivity, or bogging down application or network performance. The new PMP reports now put the knowledge at the administrator's fingertip so bandwidth issues can be efficiently dealt with."

The newest PMP features released by E-update include tracking PostScript N-Up to ensure that the proper page count is tracked when users select multiple pages per sheet. There are many new reports (in addition to the over 100 already available) to track printing by Bandwidth:

1. Summary of Bandwidth by User

2. Summary of Bandwidth by Printer

3. Summary of Bandwidth by Printer Group

4. Summary of Bandwidth by Server

5. Summary of Bandwidth by Workstation

6. Summary of Bandwidth over X Number of Bytes

7. Detailed History of Bandwidth over X Number of Bytes

8. Graph: Top 10 Users by Bandwidth

9. Graph: Top 10 Printers by Bandwidth

10. Graph: Top 10 Workstations by Bandwidth

11. Graph: Top 10 Print Servers by Bandwidth

12. Graph: Chart of Bandwidth by Printer Group

13. Graph: Total Print Bandwidth by Hour

14. Graph: Total Print Bandwidth by Month and Day

PMP runs as a service on Windows print servers and is compatible with all Windows versions including Vista.

Print Manager Plus supports all printers on the market.

PMP controls, accounts for and reports all printing of each user and device from every operating system (Unix, Macintosh and others) where printing is spooling though a Windows print server.

It is the only print job accounting and management software that is not only verified and logo certified by Microsoft, but also native to and integrated with Windows with its look and feel as an extension of Windows.

PMP is priced fairly so the vast majority of organizations of every kind can afford it. It's licensed simply per print server. The cost is $995 for an average organization with a thousand users.

Print Manager Plus requires no training for an average IT person familiar with Windows. It installs and is operating within minutes in the average organization with even thousands of users.

It is featured as Microsoft Public Sector "Solution of the Month" for March having maintained that status for the previous 17 months. No other job accounting software has been so validated by Microsoft nor ever been chosen as Microsoft Solution of the Month.

An industry study of 950 organizations using PMP with mixed printer brands showed that 63 percent of the respondents considered it so important that if HP would have provided PMP to them, they would have switched all their printers to the HP brand.

Microsoft made Print Manager Plus accessible to all schools and universities worldwide this year upon the release of Microsoft Learning Network Manager (LNM) to all schools and universities in all countries. LNM includes a link to download a time-limited version of PMP free. No third party tool is included in LNM except Print Manager Plus. LNM helps schools save money for their budgets and Print Manager Plus is a tool that directly and quickly helps achieve this purpose.

A free, 30 day version of Print Manager Plus can be downloaded at www.softwareshelf.com. It is supported by resellers and partners worldwide and by Software Shelf offices in the US and UK with support provided in 13 European languages.

Software Shelf® customers include the British Library, University of California, Bank of England, Harvard, Oxford, NATO, CNN, Morgan Stanley, Commerzbank, European Transaction Bank, National Bank of Kuwait, Hyatt Hotels, LA Unified School District, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and thousands more companies, schools and government offices worldwide.

Software Shelf and Print Manager Plus are trademarks owned by Software Shelf worldwide.

Source: Business Wire

More News in this Category