According to Gartner, “the Digital Workplace enables new, more effective ways of working; raises employee engagement and agility; and exploits consumer-oriented styles and technologies.” It is no surprise that cloud-based technologies play a critical role in shaping the Digital Workplace because workers require access to applications and data from any location, at any time, and from a variety of computing devices. Today’s workers also want to collaborate and communicate more effectively with their colleagues, partners and customers, and be as productive as possible.
Cloud computing can support these objectives, enabling efficient work activities with fewer obstacles. To create a successful cloud strategy, organizations must address many questions and explore multiple options, such as:
- Whether to have private, public or hybrid cloud solutions?
- How to address security and compliance requirements in your cloud strategy?
- How to support and manage critical business processes in the cloud?
- Which applications will move to the cloud, and will they run on-premise or off-premise using third-party infrastructure?
- Whether to manage everything in-house or look to third-party providers for solutions, including operational and management skills?
When developing your cloud strategy for the Digital Workplace, please don’t overlook the important role that paper and digital documents play in your business. In fact, your business depends on them. You may be thinking, “Isn’t the goal of the Digital Workplace to eliminate paper documents”? Yes, in terms of waste, inefficient use and long-term storage retention. However, paper documents are not going away anytime soon despite a major shift toward electronic formats. They are the physical embodiment of their digital counterpart, and although they often have a short lifespan, they serve an important business purpose.
Print, scan and other digitalization workflows are key elements of your future cloud strategy. Although printers and multifunction devices will always be located on-premise, the print/output management middleware software can run in the cloud, either on-premise or off-premise. It can also be managed by your organization or a trusted third-party service provider.
LRS® offers several options for managing printing, scanning and electronic documents in the cloud. We recognize that no “one-size-fits-all” offering can satisfy all customers’ functional, operational, and business-model requirements. Customers can choose between different private and public cloud SaaS solutions, including a wide range of LRS managed and hosted services. We also work closely with several outsourcing partners, including managed print services (MPS) providers, who can offer our software in the form of cloud-based “print as a service”.
In this webinar, Brent Black, Director of Product Management for Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc., talks about cloud concepts and terminology, and shares his perspectives on several print management solutions for the cloud. This session will help you decide the best options to consider for your organization; for example, which solutions may be best for large enterprises versus small-medium businesses.