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Ringdale’s FollowMe Embedded Available for Lexmark’s Latest A4 Printers and Copier/MFPs

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Lexmark’s new A4 laser printer and MFP lineup for small and mid-size workgroups introduced earlier this month.

Ringdale, a U.K. provider of document-output management solutions, today announced that its FollowMe Embedded is now available Lexmark’s latest A4 workgroup MFPs including the MX520 and MX620 Series (see “Lexmark Focuses on Faster Print and Scan Speeds, Higher Toner Yields, and More with New A4 Models“).

As 71 percent of IT professionals have not yet considered office printing as part of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to market-research firm IDC, Ringdale says it’s working with the leading managed print providers to close the gap on data privacy for document-output processes such as printing. FollowMe provides the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and compliance features for Lexmark customers to meet evolving security and compliance needs.

Ringdale says it continues to extend its embedded solutions for the leading printer brand. Other partners that feature the FollowMe include Brother International, Canon Inc., HP Inc. Lexmark International, Konica Minolta, Kyocera Mita, Oce, OKI, Ricoh, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba, and Xerox.

FollowMe Embedded for Lexmark provides:

FollowMe Printing

This enables users to print to a shared print queue, roam, and release their print job from any enabled printer of copier/MFP device. This ensures print output remains secure, and reduces printed waste in the form of documents left uncollected at the printer. If a printer is out of service, users can release their print jobs from the next available printer.

Business Intelligence

FollowMe’s business intelligence engine is said to make it easy for organizations to implement enterprise-wide printing policies, such as allowing color printing only when authorized by the organization, or automatically enforcing that email messages are printed in monochrome. These printing policies can be defined and automatically enforced per user, department or enterprise-wide.

The print-routing technology can automatically re-direct print jobs to the printer best suited to the task, for example re-routing large documents to the most cost-efficient printers or, if a device is out of service, print jobs are re-queued for release on another device.

To prevent unnecessary printing, print-job retention policies can be used to automatically delete jobs abandoned in the print queue after a specified amount of time.

With the advanced scripting engine, administrators can define and implement custom-built policies or routing conditions according to any requirement, no matter how detailed or bespoke.

Reporting

FollowMe tracks all print, copy, fax, scan, and email activity across the entire organization, and provides reporting tools that provide an accurate picture on costs and activity, on a per user, device, or department basis. Organizations are then able to make fact-based decisions to optimize the printing environment or allocate costs to departments or clients.

FollowMe provides various reporting templates to support data analysis; however if more detail is required, the reporting tool supports the creation of customized on-demand reports to meet various business requirements. Data can be exported in most document formats, including PDF, HTML and CSV. Reports can be scheduled to automatically send to email or to a specific folder location.

For organizations that must comply with industry-security regulations, activity reports can be generated from tracking data, providing an audit trail for user actions and device use.

The built-in billing capability enables organizations to recover printing costs from departments or clients, where activity is captured and assigned to pre-defined billing codes for cost allocation. To accommodate each organizational structure, FollowMe provides flexible cost assignment models and integrates with most third-party accounting systems.

Mobile Printing

FollowMe’s Mobile Printing feature brings the power of printing to mobile phones, supporting users to print securely while out of the office. Documents can be submitted for print via e-mail, web-client and from any mobile phone or tablet device. Users can print from their iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, or any other mobile or tablet devices.

This print-driver-less printing technology gives users the freedom to print, without the need for a print driver, connection to the corporate network, or even a computer. Users working from home or on the road, no longer need to plan their time around when or where they can print.

Central Management

To simplify the management of the printing environment, FollowMe consolidates the control of print queues, servers, and devices into one centralized, Web-based administration interface. With this interface administrators’ can access the tools and information they need to manage the entire printing environment.

The Web-based administration interface provides a search engine to quickly find users or devices for review and editing, and a performance monitor, giving a snapshot of live activity across the entire printing environment.

Print policies are accessible via the administration interface, helping organizations reduce costs and waste. It also provides the tools for reporting and cost allocation.

Each user has a Web-client tool, for basic print job management. With this tool users can delete print jobs, upload documents for print, or view recent activity all without the support of an administrator.

Both the administration interface and the Web-client can be customized, with interfaces localized to the connecting user’s language and designed according to corporate identity.

Security

FollowMe protects document confidentiality, by holding print jobs on a secure server, only to be printed by the owner, after the user authenticates themselves at the output device.

In order to implement the best security configuration for each infrastructure, FollowMe offers a range of user-authentication options, from radio frequency ID (RFID) smart cards, contact smart cards, numeric keypad,s or biometric fingerprint readers. Most authentication methods integrate with existing business applications, supporting effective deployment and Single Sign On capability (SSO).

FollowMe also has a wide embedded portfolio, providing a solution for most manufacturers’ printers and copier/MFPs, where user authentication is enabled directly from the device touchscreen, without the need for external hardware. This is also available for certain single-function printers with which readers can be attached directly.

To prevent unauthorized personnel intercepting data, FollowMe can optionally encrypt data, using government-grade data encryption to maximize security. FollowMe also restricts device access and user privileges, safeguarding devices and ensuring users only have access to the functions relevant for their job role. Restrictions can be made for copy, print, email, fax and scan and applied per user, output device, or department.

For details on this release or the Ringdale partner program, contact Ringdale’s Charlotte Baker at cbaker@ringdale.com. For further information on FollowMe, visit Ringdale here.

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