Cortado Cuts Costs with Pull Printing for Lexmark Printers

Free Personal Printing client enhances Lexmark printers with user-authenticated printing

(BERLIN/DENVER, January 15, 2014) Cortado, creator of the leading virtual printing solution ThinPrint, has made it even easier for companies to save on printing costs. Cortado´s pull printing solution, Personal Printing, can now be used in combination with a free Lexmark client, which currently makes 57 different Lexmark printer models Personal Printing-capable.

Even in the digital age, most users haven’t changed their printing habits much. Printed documents often end up in the trash or unread. At the same time, hardware maintenance and user support strain IT budgets. According to experts, a pull printing solution reduces these costs by 20 percent.

Previously, the introduction of a pull printing solution was complex, expensive and restrictive to certain hardware. Now with Personal Printing, users simply use an app to authenticate and pickup printouts. Personal Printing does not have any hardware requirements and can be implemented cost-effectively at approx. $1.90/€1.40 per user per month.

By utilizing software already on the printers, Personal Printing can now be used on a range of Lexmark printers without the need of a smartphone and without buying additional hardware. Users can enter their PIN directly on the device or authenticate their identity per smartcard.

After IT has introduced Personal Printing, users decide for themselves which printouts they need and can delete unnecessary print jobs. At the same time, IT spends less time on tending to the printer environment thanks to a single, unified printer queue, simple management, and a reduced number of help desk calls.

Furthermore, when printers fail, users can authenticate with their smartcard/PIN on any other printer and initiate their printouts there. This increases productivity and makes costly maintenance contracts with short reaction times unnecessary.

“Lexmark has been an important partner of ours for many years now. We work together with them within the scope of the Cloud Printing Alliance, among other things,” said Bernd Hausmann, Technical Director Strategic Relationships at Cortado AG. “The new Personal Printing client, which we are offering for free, is an important step for us in facilitating smartcard authentication for our customers conveniently, inexpensively, and securely at the same time.”

A 30-day free trial version of the recently released Personal Printing 3.0 and the Lexmark client, also free, are available at www.personal-printing.com.

The Lexmark client can be used with various printer models from the X, T, CX, and MX series (models that support Lexmark’s Embedded Solution Framework (eSF) 2, 3 or 4). A complete list can be found at www.personal-printing.com/lexmark.

This press release and the press photo are available online and ready to download: www.cortado.com/press

About Cortado

Cortado – formerly ThinPrint – has delivered solutions for the modern working world since 1999. Enterprise mobility, printing, virtualization and BYOD are the main focus of the company. Cortado combines innovative devices such as smartphones and tablets with the customary requirements of office work, in teams and beyond space and system boundaries.

Easy for users, innovative, reliable, and with a high return on investment. These are the distinguishing features of Cortado products. No other company focuses so much on the issue of consumerization. By constantly evaluating feedback from users of its free cloud services available in all major app stores, Cortado continuously improves its products. These foundations allow Cortado to optimally implement an enterprise mobility strategy for businesses of all sizes.

Cortado established itself internationally with ThinPrint, the leading printer virtualization technology, which is used in 116 countries by thousands of companies. Even the biggest customers of Citrix XenApp and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services rely on ThinPrint. Via a long-term OEM partnership, VMware integrates ThinPrint technology.

The advantages of printer virtualization will only increase, also for cloud providers and in networks with physical desktops. Results are significant cost savings, immensely reduced helpdesk requests and noticeably more satisfied employees.

Over 18,000 enterprise customers with 5 up to 150,000 employees, as well as hundreds of thousands of individual users worldwide rely on Cortado solutions. As an internationally operating company, and founder of the Cloud Printing Alliance, Cortado employs over 220 highly skilled employees at its headquarters in Berlin, Germany and in its branch offices in the United States, the UK, Australia, France and Japan. Cortado was a winner of the 2013 Great Place to Work® competition and is named as one of the “Best Employers in Berlin-Brandenburg 2013”.