ZeroServer™ Edge Computing technology applied to printers

ZeroServer™ is an innovating technology developed by Celiveo, it uses Edge Computing and allows to remove all printing-related servers in a company to save up to 10 time the cost of printing and make printing easier, secure and robust.​

The ZeroServer Architecture

No Server, No Bottleneck

ZeroServer is based on the Edge Computing distributed architecture where the intelligence is located at every node of the print architecture:

  • Inside the printer or MFP whenever possible
  • Inside an adapter located behind the printer otherwise
  • Inside the end-users PC for ZeroServer setup
  • Inside a print server if a print-server setup is requested​ to mix server and serverless as needed within one single architecture

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Enterprise Print Architecture Without Edge computing

Print servers are heavily used to host the secure printing solution, drive printers, manage drivers, spool print jobs. Redundancy and large fleet means adding extra servers

Enterprise Print Architecture With Celiveo Edge Computing

The Celiveo Secure Printing Solution is running at printer level, print drivers are pulled from SQL Server, print jobs flow directly from client PC to printers and/or can go through servers

Some hard facts about servers

Why Print Application Servers Are A Problem :

Application servers are not only costly, they represent a serious production risk:

  • Any technical glitch on the server or software will affect all printers, all users
  • Server maintenance means nobody can print or authenticate on MFPs to make a copy
  • Fault tolerance requires to use even more application servers
  • The more printers and sites, the more servers are required
  • A central unique server is then the worst possible choice in term of risks/cost

Why Print Servers Are A Problem:

  • They have a very stiff cost, in average $500 per month per server https://www.tco.microsoft.com/
  • If they are failing or rebooted for maintenance purpose, no user can print
  • They represent a very high security risk:
    • With a simple click an IT admin can capture, view, reprint any print job from any user and can target specific users (a CFO, CEO, HR…)
    • Shared print queues expose to all users eyes the print job names
  • Print queues have to be managed and monitored, that can be hundreds

Why Print Servers Are Used:

  • Mostly to host the printer drivers and manage access rights to print queues
  • That allows to use click and print with no driver to deploy to clients
  • When a new printer is installed, the new driver propagates to connected client PC
  • Until Celiveo, cost tracking solution could only run on print servers

Celiveo: Scalable, Fast, Robust

No central server, no application server that orchestrates printing, no master server, no slave server.

No bottleneck, no central point of failure: same setup for 1 or 100,000 printers, ​that’s the direct benefit or Edge Computing.

Secure Peer to Peer Communication

Celiveo on the printer

SQL Server

  • Peer to peer Secure Communication with SQL Server
  • Direct writing of badge # for enrollment into SQL
  • Direct badge number lookup in enrollment tables
  • Direct reading of pending print jobs tickets & rules
  • Direct writing of usage tracking data
  • High Availability mechanism if SQL Server is down

Celiveo on the printer

Active Directory/LDAP

  • Peer to peer Secure Communication with AD/LDAP
  • Direct user authentication during enrollment process
  • Direct writing of badge # for enrollment into AD
  • Direct badge number lookup with badge # in AD
  • Direct reading of user OU and groups (access control)
  • High Availability mechanism if AD is not reachable

Celiveo on the MFP

End-User PC or Windows Server

  • Peer to peer Secure Communication with user PC where a Celiveo client service is loaded
  • Peer to peer Secure Communication with Server
  • Printer/MFP requests print jobs directly from PC or Windows server
  • High Availability mechanism

Celiveo ZeroServer Edge Computing Architecture provides more than the benefits found in servers

Drivers management & Distribution to client PCs

The Celiveo client software automatically downloads and applies the Windows Print driver and settings defined by the administrator for the chosen Print-Direct printer or Pull Print queue. It is even possible to deploy multiple settings/drivers for one same printer, ie with standard configuration for color, booklets, paper trays.

Cost Tracking and Reporting

Celiveo tracks print jobs using supported MFP and printers intelligence, able to report accurately partially printed documents and color documents as B&W when printed on a B&W printer. Such information is sent directly to SQL Server without going through any gateway or server and the information is buffered in case SQL is not reachable.

The Celiveo Report Center is a web application that only needs to be run when needed, it access SQL server directly to compute the tracking data and deliver reports.

Access Control to Printers and MFPs

Celiveo controls the access to printers using Active Directory OU and groups information as well as IP ranges for the decision. Such rules also apply to access control to MFP walkup functions such as copy, scan , fax, email, pull print etc.

Fit for Amazon AWS Cloud and Microsoft Azure Cloud

The Celiveo intelligence is located at the printers and user PC levels, communicating directly with backbone resources such as SQL Server, ActiveDirectory or LDAP. As such the solution is plug&play with Cloud infrastructure where those resources can be located, and the Celiveo Enterprise High-Availability capability ensure it always works even if the Cloud is not reachable or abnormally slow.

Global Fortune 500 companies with thousands of printers are relying daily on Celiveo Enterprise with ZeroServer technology to print efficiently and at the lowest possible TCO.

Contact us to know more about our track record.