Managed Print Services- solution of the year?

Over the past 6 months the murmur regarding managed print services has been getting louder.  And now it has become an all out scream.  This has fallen directly in line with the 2009 business mantra of “do more, repurpose employees, save money and do it NOW”.  While there are a number of partners now in this game, Xerox seems to have taken the lead and is growing fast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During the early part of this decade the term “paperless” was on the tip of everyone’s tongue .  Now people have realized that paper will never go away entirely. In fact, new 2009 estimates say that an average worker will be responsible for 3,000-15,000 pages per year.  Michael Scott’s commercial on The Office, might be more spot on than the joke it was initially supposed to be “Limitless paper in a paperless world.”  In the current paperless world, companies are responsible for hundreds of thousands of pages per year and the current strategy is failing miserably.

Problems with the current printing landscape:

- Companies purchase and roll out far too many printers for an environment.  The band-aid quick fix clogs the system and results in overconsumption of toners and excess use of IT staff to manage.

- Printers account for 25-30% of help desk calls. 

- Typical IT staffs do not have printer technicians.  They usually have IT generalists who end up learning as they go.  This is a poor allocation of IT staff since they are spending excessive time figuring out printer issues instead of using their IT knowledge for company driven initiatives.

- Lack of control over spending.  Printer consumables are not consistently ordered, IT staff spend countless paid hours working with printers, when a printer line ends the company is stuck with the remaining supplies. 

Now here are some ways that managed print services can alleviate these problems:

- strategically placed print units that maximize user productivity and usually decrease the number of units in the environment.

- Cost control.  Managed print services work on a cost-per-print basis, so total monthly usage can become budgeted as a business decision and not as an ad-hoc purchase.  Hourly employees will not need to spend time servicing units or ordering product.

- IT staffs can become more efficient by spending their time in skill specific IT initiatives and plans without the interruption of help desk calls for product in which they have no training.

The fix for all of these ailments is pretty simple.  A managed print service partner will work with you to get a reading on your print volume and types of prints.  The partner will then use this data to give you a larger 30,000ft overview of your print environment and projections.  Typically this includes reallocation of print resources so you can optimize the printers and multi-function units you already own.  If you see the benefit, you can then partner with the managed print service partner to handle your print needs.  Outsourcing desktop printing services takes the uncontrolled spending and usage of printers and ropes it into a manageable and easily budgeted process.

IT Forecast-strategic technology in 2010

In the first part of our breakdown of Gartner’s 2010 projections, we looked at total IT budget moves for next year and beyond.  Today I want to talk about Gartner’s Strategic Technologies in 2010.  They are pretty similar to their 2009 Technologies, but the changes are noteworthy.

 

 

The top 10 Strategic Technologies are:

     Cloud Computing

     Advanced Analytics

     Client Computing

     IT for Green

    Reshaping the Data Center

     Social Computing

     Security – Activity Monitoring

     Flash Memory

     Virtualization for Availability

The first thing I notice when looking at this list is that outside of the emergence of Flash Memory the list is not focused on new/hot hardware as much as it is on optimizing current hardware and software that increases productivity.  This falls in line with Gartner’s previous projections that  currently show large declines followed by flat hardware growth going forward.

Larry Dignan at ZDNet has a pretty nifty chart that shows the movement from 2009 technologies to 2010 technologies.  When I check it out the first thing that surprises me is that cloud computing has moved to #1 on the list.  Everything I have seen on the mid-sized to enterprise side has shown that businesses are very reluctant to move their data onto the cloud, even Tier2.  Far be it from me to get into a disagreement with Gartner, they are much smarter than I, but I just don’t see the cloud entering the mid-sized to enterprise space for a few more years (even if it should be there today).  There just aren’t enough successes out there yet.  I’m concerned with my differed option and I’ll do some follow-up in the next few weeks.

The other thing that jumps off the page is the dropping of Unified Communications and Servers from the Top 10.  While I think some of the drop in Servers may fall in the realm of decreased hardware.  However, I think they both fall because customers simply are cutting all of the unnecessary fat.  UC and Server upgrades are far from being fat, but I feel that when it comes to absolute necessities for a budget year, those are easy cuts.

Virtualization, as a category unto itself, has dropped from #1 in 2009, to being part of a number of different categories in 2010.  This doesn’t surprise me one bit.  The mythical term of “virtualization” that was difficult to grasp in 2004 and 2005 has finally been realized and now broken up into smaller chunks.  I have a feeling that this is the same know-it’s-good-but-not-quite-sure-how-to-use-it lifecycle that cloud computing may follow.  However, virtualization was essentially a technology driven by a single source, VMware, in its infancy; whereas cloud computing is the exact opposite and is being driven by hundreds or thousands of individual partners.

Looking at the Gartner projected strategic technologies for 2010 I see it being a year of long nights for CIOs and IT Directors.  Searching similar products for feature benefits is going away and 2010 will have  more conceptual changes making their way into daily IT conversations.  While a huge pain, I think these new technologies will drive huge savings both in budget and man hours.

IT forecast- 2010 and beyond

 

Gartner has come out with 2 huge projections this week regarding both the short term and long term IT forecast as well as top initiatives for 2010.  While they are not pretty (looks like 2008 #’s wont’ be seen again until 2012), these #’s do help us to see that the next few years of IT planning and spending will need to be seen through some new eyes.  Over the next two posts I will address both of these projections.   

The first projection I would like to jump in on is a press release Gartner released on Oct 20th that discussed their 2010 fiscal projections.  According to the release, after a projected 6.9% drop in 2009, we will see a spending increase of 3.3% in 2010.  Additionally, Gartner says it will be 2012 until we see spending up to the 2008 totals. 

Peter Sondergaard, senior VP at Gartner and global head of research added the following:

“While the IT industry will return to growth in 2010, the market will not recover to 2008 revenue levels before 2012.  2010 is about balancing the focus on cost, risk, and growth. For more than 50 percent of CIOs the IT budget will be 0 percent or less in growth terms. It will only slowly improve in 2011.”

It looks like hardware was the hardest his category in 2009, with a projected 16.5% decrease.  This makes sense as during the “Great Budget Scare of 4th Q 2008″, cutting hardware from 2009 IT budgets was the easiest way to immediately feel as if they were saving money.  At the same time, it was the easiest way to show dollar savings to other departments across an organization.   Luckily Gartner expects hardware spending to neither increase nor decrease in 2010.  Getting a sneak peek at a few customer’s 2010 budgets, I fully agree with Gartner.

Looking forward, Gartner also focused on 3 new items that IT leaders must consider in 2010 and 3 items from 2009 that will remain important.

The new items include: 

     A Shift from Capital Expenditure to Operational Expenditure in the IT Budget

     Impact of the Increased Age of IT Hardware

     IT Must Learn to Build Compelling Business Cases

And the 2009 concepts that will continue to remain at the top of an IT leaders list will include:

     Business Intelligence

     Virtualization

     Social Media

What this means is that IT planning, procurement, sales and IT’s role in an organization is making another huge shift.  IT made it’s last major shift when the dot-com bubble burst and budgets were hacked and reformed.  The days “use it or lose it” are gone for most and were replaced with budgets in silos. Those silos were categorized by quarters and by product group and left little wiggle room for IT leaders.  I think that this next shift will mesh IT budgets even more as the Sever-budget and Desktop Budget, which was handed by an IT director and CIO, will be replaced with a Managed Printing Budget, Infrastructure Budget and Business Continuity Budget which will incorporate CFO’s, CEO’s and become a part an entire corporate objective.

Budget Savings: Leasing w/ De Lage Landen

Leasing is a different type of topic but one that I deal with on a regular basis and definitely one where it’s important to make a good choice. For both myself and my customers, the following are the keys when deciding if leasing is a good option and if so, who to choose:

-How quickly can I obtain a lease quote. DLL provides their partners with a number of tools so we can help customers with an immediate quote. This is key for those IT folks who need to get some #’s to their boss or to a board quickly, so they can get approval and get product in the door ASAP.

-What type of leasing options are available. DLL is not unique here as most leasing companies have 12, 24, 36 month leases with both a Fair Market Value and $1 buyout option. DLL has given one of my customers the ability to pay on an annual basis, which I haven’t dealt with before, but it was a nice option that was key for the customer.

-Low rates. Low rates. While the rate #’s themselves are always changing, DLL seems to have the lowest rates of the top leasing companies I work with. DLL attributes this to their worldwide ranking in terms of number of leases and total assets under lease.

-Safety. With the lack of trust in banks/financial institutions over the past 12-24 months, DLL and their parent company RaboBank are the only AAA rated bank on earth. Safest bank in the world sounds pretty good to me.

I have worked with a number of leasing companies and I believe that De Lage Landen offers more than anyone else. From the perspective of an IT sales partner, here are the key differentiators:

-DLL leases (under the DLL name or under the name of XXX Financial, XXX can be any tech manufacturer of choice) to 80% of the Fortune 500 companies.
-DLL’s leases are flexible. This flexibility is true for a single purchase lease, a software rollout, or mixing IT purchases with purchases from different departments within an organization.
-DLL can usually have $100K and under credit approvals in 24 hours or less. I have seen $20K and less approvals in this time, but the $20-$100K approval in under 24hrs has been virtually unheard of.
-DLL has/is offering a number of promotions that allow customers to buy now and pay for purchases in the next calendar year. This is key for high priority projects that have 2010 approval but would make sense to roll out in Q4 of 2009.

I have been pleased with DLL’s service, support and representatives and think they have a high value for both IT departments and full corporate financial planning in general.

Weekly Training: HP

First things first, I love HP. They have been my partner of choice for years and in most situations they are my default recommended product. Their quality is fantastic, their pricing has come on par with IBM and Dell over the last few years, and their support to sales partners such as myself has been excellent (customers have reported average support). Now with that disclaimer out of the way, let me share some information about my training this week.

The major goal of this training was to discuss some changes in their Agent Program. The agent program is an agreement between HP, a partner such as MNJ, and a customer. In essence, the customer buys directly from HP (ordering and payment is to HP direct) with support (quotes, orders, tracking, pricing assistance) coming from the “agent” or partner. This program is a mixed bag of tricks for all involved:

For the customer: The pro is that they receive a more enterprise level pricing and ordering structure, the con is that they are “at the mercy “ of HP’s price and lose the ability to manage pricing with the vendor partner.

For HP: They get more control over the customer and the pricing, the con is that they are paying the vendor partner for being a virtual sales force for HP.

For the vendor partner the pro is that they do not have to handle accounts receivable and have a guaranteed bottom level of payment. The con is that the “agent fee” is pretty low and the vendor partner loses some of the ability to negotiate on behalf of the customer.

So after a nice conversation about that program and hearing the HP cheerleading about why it’s great, we talked about a few questions/issues regarding HP:

-The biggie was “Where the heck are all the HP Printers?” The answer is: HP screwed up and forecasted poorly and essentially didn’t plan to produce enough. Good for HP sales, bad for everyone else in the country who needs and HP printer. The channel is tapped. This is one order that will hit the distributors this month, and then they will be tapped again through September. This is ridiculous, there is nothing available anywhere. I’ve been selling HP refurbs and Xerox as an alternative to just get by. If anyone out there needs an HP printer, you are going to have a very difficult time with that acquisition over the next 3 months.

-We spoke a little bit about HP Financing and they are offering 0% for 36 months right now. For companies who need product now and don’t have the budget space for it in 2009, this is a great option. I guess the motivator for HP is that they take a hit at HP Financing to push more product through HP Direct. I see the logic and it could be of great benefit to companies who like to finance/lease.

-The final piece of info, which was more of a reminder, is that HP will continue to ship their DT/NB lines with Vista and an XP downgrade for the rest of 2009 and possibly into 2010. Considering this XP cutoff date has been pushed back for a few years now, who knows when the XP disks will be retired.

Overall a decent training. The Agent Program definitely has its benefits, especially in competitive environments where they are pushing out Dell, but I know my customers like to have a bit more control over their account, so I don’t see it taking over my HP business or anything. It was nice to have an HP badged employee in and giving us some updates, especially on the printers. The printers are a nightmare for customers, vendor partners and for HP. They have had product constraints due to foreign parts in the past, but I cannot remember a 3+month hold out like this one. HP will definitely lose a little bit of market share on this one (and I’m sure at HP HQ, some heads are rolling).

Weekly Training: NETGEAR

NETGEAR game in this week and opened up the fire hose, blasting information on switches, storage and appliances.  All in one 30 minute presentation.  NETGEAR has always had a pretty solid networking product for a very reasonable price.  Before today, my experience has never made its way to storage and security appliances.  However, the whitepapers look good and I think I would definitely consider NETGEAR storage and security for a small business partner or possibly a branch office.

 

Pros:

-ReadyNAS 3200 comes in a variety of 2u units (6, 12 and 24T)

-ReadyNAS units are slightly more expensive than Buffalo, but offer much more storage/$ and many more features.

-ReadyNAS offers (although limited) fault tolerance, offsite replication and snapshots, prepackaged with the box.

-ProSecure boxes offer AV, web, content filtering, UTM, Firewall, Intrusion (prevention/detection) and VPN all in a single box with a single interface,

-ProSecure licenses per appliance/box and not per user, which is more cost efficient and makes license management easy (vs. different licenses and renewal dates)

 

Cons:

-For the price, ReadyNAS is only slightly less expensive than HP/NetApp which is more flexible and has a full lineup of storage software.

-ReadyNAS is not VMware certified

-ReadyNAS software and service upgrades are costly

-ProSecure is still missing a # of features like: Active Directory integration and quarantine.

-ProSecure GUI is difficult to manage

 

Overall, both of these NETGEAR products are solid and will offer an improvement over what is probably in house.  While ReadyNAS doesn’t follow the typical NETGEAR almost-lowest price point, it offers a ton of storage in the $4-6K range.  The ReadyNAS has won a number of awards, including CRN’s Product of the Year, for a very good reason, it offers small business’ a ton of semi-smart storage.  The ProSecure is a good all-in-one appliance, but doesn’t really find a “perfect fit”.  It’s a good buy for the price and is definitely an improvement over siloed security, however this author would probably shell out a few more dollars for a unit from Fortinet or SonicWALL.

Budget savings: Remanufactured toners-Rhinotek

Buy a toner, save a Rhino, you can't go wrong.

While there are some reports that IT budget cutting may have finally hit rock bottom, I am still getting daily requests on ways to save budget dollars. Here is an easy one: remanufactured toner. I was very skeptical of remanufactured toners for years and during those years I would only sell them if a customer made that specific request. My fears were probably similar to yours: these are essentially used parts with low success #’s, what if they malfunction and void my printer manufacturer warranty, the price savings isn’t worth the risk, who can I trust.

I am very pleased to share that I have personally tested and stand by Rhinotek as a great partner for these toners. Since researching and testing Rhinotek I have put out dozens of orders and have not had a single complaint. There are a number of reasons why I now stand by remanufactured toners and specifically Rhinotek:

*Strength of Warranty
- Product Guarantee – Rhinotek products are 100% guaranteed to meet OEM warranty and compatibility standards.
-30-day Satisfaction Guarantee – If you’re not completely happy with your purchase, simply exchange or return it within 30 days.
- Printer Replacement Guarantee: Exclusive! Rhinotek products are manufactured to such exacting standards that if our product is verified as the source of any damage to your printer, we’ll repair or replace the printer absolutely FREE.
-For maintenance kits: Rhinotek 6-month warranty is twice as long as the normal OEM 90 day warranty

*Cost Savings
-Rhinotek products usually come in between 25 and 50% below manufacturer OEM toner prices

*Depth of Product Line
-Rhinotek has toners/inks/kits for most printers from HP, Dell, Lexmark and IBM.

*Save a Rhino
-I think this is hilarious, but I guess if you can do your job, purchase some product, save some money and help the animals, why not.

You can find a number of reviews of Rhinotek parts here: http://www.rhinotek.com/rit.aspx

Overall I think Rhinotek is a very solid partner and by using their products you can find a significant cost savings (25-50%) on day one. Rhinotek believes in their products and offers a free trial toner to any new customer. So if you need to sell this change to anyone else in your organization you can do it much easier by showing them instead of telling them.