Case Study: Cloud Printing BYOD

Ricoh creates the ultimate bring your own device (BYOD) environment at a leading university

About the customer

The client was a major university that recognized the use of technology on campus from students, staff and faculty, and wanted to provide a way for individuals on campus to print from their devices while away from their dormitories and classrooms.

Challenge

A large university recognized the rise of technology being used on campus, and wanted to find a way for students, staff and faculty to print easily while away from their dorms and classrooms.

To encourage better collaboration and information delivery, they decided to implement a new, integrated mobile printing solution.

But with tens of thousands of users all using different mobile devices from different brands, as well as security and cost concerns, the project would be a big undertaking.

Solution

We responded with our HotSpot Enterprise mobile printing solution, which lets personal devices communicate with any enabled campus printer.

The solution is easy to maintain and, since it eliminates the need for IT to configure and install multiple drivers on student, faculty, and staff devices, it's cost-effective for the university.

With HotSpot, users are given multiple ways to print from their devices, including:

Sending an email to a specific printer's email address.
Uploading documents to the web.
Using the HotSpot Enterprise printing app.

It also gives everyone an easy, more secure way to print. Data transferred either between a cloud server and an MFP for output, or between servers and third-party cloud services, is fully encrypted — helping to protect files against security breaches.

To help with costs even more, we paired HotSpot Enterprise with Equitrac Follow-You Printing, a cost recovery system, giving university administration the ability to keep track of spending and usage and see who is printing what.

Results

With Ricoh's HotSpot Enterprise, this university has their mobile printing needs met in a way that's easy and cost-effective for both users and the university's IT team. And most importantly, students, staff and faculty have the flexibility to share and deliver information from anywhere on campus, including common dorm areas, the library, the student union, the lab and more.