This week we ask Lee Pietrowski, VP Sales K-12, at IMAGETEC LP in McHenry, IL, shares a technology trend that’s hot in his market and a trend that’s not as hot but could be if manufacturers changed their approach.
What’s hot?
Pietrowski: Mobile device. Education uses one-to-one devices so how you control a one-to-one device when it comes to printing is something we come up against all of the time. If you have an Airprint machine it doesn’t track and doesn’t care who’s printing it. I can have a student make 500 copies of something using Airprint and I’m not going to be able to track that back to him.
We found a company we work with and we’re certified on their software and it’s capable of sending out an app to each one of these mobile devices that will track and authenticate who’s using it. For a school district that’s like gold because now they know everything that’s being done. They can put rules-based printing on it, they could put limitations on it…this is great for their budget because they now have a cost associated with what their technology team has budgeted for the year.
What’s not?
Pietrowski: Many manufacturers are starting to charge a monthly fee to access cloud-based applications. I think they’d sell more products if they didn’t charge [for these apps] and got people hooked on using them like Apple does. They give you free apps—there’s some they charge for but most are free or you can get light versions for free. That’s where some manufacturers are going wrong; they should incorporate these [apps] into their systems.
