Cambridge University enables hybrid printing for students and staff with PaperCut MF and Mobility Print.
PaperCut has announced that the University of Cambridge is using PaperCut MF and PaperCut Mobility Print to facilitate hybrid printing for its 20,000 students and 11,000 staff members across 31 Colleges and 150 departments.
The University’s requirement to offer hybrid print was driven by not just the number of devices and end users, but also by the UK’s COVID-19 lockdowns, which caused Cambridge’s students and staff to be divided between working remotely and on-site learning.
The University of Cambridge’s printing environment supports 27 Colleges and even though they are members of the University, each College manages its own IT infrastructure including their networking. Compounding this complexity, was Google Cloud Print’s deprecation. Kelvin Morgan, Computer Officer, and Dean Feltham, Print Technician, explained that they needed a robust BYOD print enablement tool to support their Colleges’ independent network infrastructures, all while continuing to support their students via their centralised printing subscription service.
Morgan and Feltham decided on PaperCut MF to underpin their centralised service, which offers participation via subscription. With PaperCut, they can manage print, photocopying, and scanning for their entire student body. “If it wasn’t for PaperCut, we wouldn’t be in the position we are in now. Ten years ago, our print service was facing a number of challenges and needed to evolve. Now it’s a service where people come to us and say “we really need to join this service. We’ve heard what it can provide”,” Morgan noted.
Meanwhile, to help support self-isolating students, they set up PaperCut MF’s Delegated Print feature: “Rather than having the job held on a queue, we could set it up so another student could release the print job and collect it on the student’s behalf. With that, PaperCut helped considerably during lockdown,” he added.
He also explained that they could support students between Colleges who weren’t able to connect to the University’s data network: “They have a requirement to print from outside the network. We find some Colleges run NATs (Network Address Translations)—which causes problems as well—so PaperCut’s Mobility Print helps with that.”
