Bandwidth Optimization & Branch Offices – Best Solutions
For businesses with multiple branch offices in any industry, storing their data centrally in computer centers is core to their day-to-day successful operations. Accessing this data in a way that doesn’t impact productivity is key. In many parts of the world, for example Eastern Europe, many parts of Africa and Asia as well as South America, fast and cost-efficient access to data is something that businesses constantly need to keep in mind.
The financial sector is one industry where uninterrupted access to data is essential, and retail banking a perfect example where a large number of branch offices need sufficient bandwidth for successful operations. SKOK Kujawiak, the largest mutual savings bank in the Polish region of Kujawy is a great example. With 28 branches in small and medium- sized towns, they have a mixed, virtualized environment consisting of components from Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix. Limited bandwidth and print management were just some of the challenges faced by the IT staff.
Printing in a retail banking environment obviously remains essential. From personalized offers to contracts and statements, both customers and employees need to rely on smooth printing every day. While a centralized print system offers many advantages compared to local print servers, one disadvantage is that print data, which is often a considerable size, has to be sent between the data center and the individual locations. Print data also has to make its way to the network printers in these locations that are hidden behind masked networks. Add to this that this data must be protected during transmission in line with national and/or GDPR data protection regulations and IT can face what seems an unsurmountable challenge.
Even despite ever-larger bandwidths, data transmission also often remains expensive. One innovative option that many IT professionals go to, is to efficiently manage print data so that bandwidth is freed up for other purposes and costs are reduced. In this example, SKOK Kujawiak turned to ThinPrint and their connection-oriented bandwidth management. This ensures that businesses always have full control of the bandwidth actually used and can optimally use their WAN/Wi-Fi connections. IT can simply define how much maximum bandwidth should be available for printing per connection or branch office.
This offers clear advantages over simple, user-based methods for limiting bandwidth. Even if a lot of employees print large documents at the same time – for example an important PDF sent to all employees, the print data can never exceed the specified bandwidth. In addition, users have the ability to reduce the bandwidth on the client side to increase application performance.
How does it all work? The ThinPrint Engine provides a fully centralized and scalable printing system that makes local print servers superfluous. Management of the printers and print drivers as well as the preparation of print jobs are all performed at the same location. Various manual administration steps for printing are automated and many faults such as driver conflicts are completely eliminated.
In addition, the ThinPrint Hub printing device can be simply connected to the network in the branch office, without any specialized IT skills – saving time and money during setup. Along with the ThinPrint Secure Tunnel, it ensures the easiest and fastest connection of the printers in the individual locations, and the encrypted transmission of sensitive print data. Dealing with bandwidth, especially for businesses with multiple locations can be a headache. If you want to find out more about how to combine the benefits of a centralized print system with low network load and fast, secure printing, then don’t miss our whitepaper Printing for Businesses with Multiple Locations which gives many useful tips on how this can be best implemented. If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line
