Standard Bank Offshore Group selects UniPrint to enable fast, reliable remote printing in their VDI environment

Standard Bank have deployed the UniPrint Infinity software across their Offshore Group within their Jersey, Isle of Man, London, Mauritius and Johannesburg offices. The Group services corporate, business, international personal and private banking clients with investments, fiduciary and banking solutions delivered from 420 internal advisors across the globe. The Group selected UniPrint to address the excessive bandwidth consumption across vast distances that was hampering speedy and reliable transmission of print data for remote printing.

The IT infrastructure within Standard Bank Offshore Group is varied. Within the Jersey headquarters, it runs a mixture of thick and thin clients on Windows 7 and Citrix XenApp 6.5. The vast geographical distances between offices created latency and bandwidth issues when printing. Whilst the Group had previously deployed an optimized print solution, distinct issues in the stability and unacceptably slow speed of print remained. The issues were especially pertinent in the Mauritius office, where the majority of Group trusts are processed entailing high volumes of essential and confidential print of PDF documents. As long printing delays occurred, there was a very real risk of key sensitive information being left inadvertently, compromising compliance. Standard Bank Offshore Group’s Chief Information Officer, Simon Le Brocq, noted: “We were receiving ongoing reports that our former printing environment was negatively impacting our internal clients’ account management as it was very slow and cumbersome.”

In the summer of 2013, the migration to Citrix XenApp 6.5 provided the Group with the opportunity to address the flagging print situation. They entrusted UniPrint accredited partner, Intercept IT as their Citrix solution consultant to provide assistance and guidance on recommending the ultimate virtualized print solution for sensitive, highly regulated environments. The resultant Proof of Concept proved that UniPrint Infinity’s PDF compression together with other advanced feature functionality would provide the best fit.

The Solution in Practice:
Nathan Hibbs, Technical Services, Standard Bank Offshore Group, oversaw the implementation allocating immediate priority to improving print speeds and reliability to the Mauritius office. Given most files printed there are PDF-based, Nathan knew that the use of UniPrint Universal Print Driver (UPD) and PDF compression would reduce the file size (and therefore latency) by as much as 90%: “Our top focus was to reverse the excessive slow and unreliable print issues experienced by our remote clients; we were thrilled to find out that we received a lot more advances besides through the deployment of UniPrint Infinity technology.”

From an IT management perspective, deployment of the UniPrint UPD has assisted the Group in eliminating the individual printer maintenance overhead involved in looking after multiple manufacturer printer drivers on the application servers allowing centralized control, while users can access different printers. The sophisticated Printer Profiles utility allows the Group to garner previously inaccessible, advanced features of multifunction printers (MFPs) and to apply them at print. Successful mapping of the Group’s complex print environment has also been addressed using UniPrint’s PrintPAL advanced feature to easily and readily assign printers to teams or groups of users. Indeed, mapping is now so straightforward that it can be delegated and facilitated by local service staff desks, ensuring that clients are always assigned with the correct local printers wherever and whenever they are working. Simon summarizes: “UniPrint has become a key product for us across any location that we support, allowing us to deliver quality to our internal clients.”

As a print intensive organization, Standard Bank Offshore Group have also welcomed the ongoing decline in their overall cost of print, primarily due to far less wastage through aborted and incomplete print jobs.

Simon sums up the install: “With the experiences we have had with UniPrint so far, we will be strongly recommending the product to the rest of the organization, given that we can easily demonstrate through a straightforward deployment the immediate and significant advances in the speed and guaranteed arrival to the device.”

Key Benefits Include:
Fast and seamless remote printing across geographical locations in a Citrix XenApp environment
Simplified and centralized print and printer management
Improved print data compliance and protection of print jobs
Optimized bandwidth usage
Reduced printing cost resulting from less wastage