Office printing should be a routine operation for business enterprises, providing a reliable, secure, and easy end-user experience. But for enterprises that continue to rely on legacy print servers, the process is more often marked by disruptions, risks, and frustrations, not to mention hidden costs and an oversized drag on IT resources. To address those issues, thousands of organizations have turned to Pharos for help with migrating to modern cloud-native print management platforms.
“The Pharos Cloud platform provides enterprises with secure printing, reduces costs and downtime, while increasing efficiency and visibility in the print environment,” says Kevin Pickhardt, Executive Chairman of Pharos.
Pharos helps the world’s largest brands and mission-driven organizations modernize the way they print. As the leader in PrintOps, the modern, cloud-native, user-centric approach to printing and the infrastructure and operations that support it, Pharos makes printing more secure, cost-effective, reliable, user-friendly, and sustainable.
Pharos has been an innovator in enterprise print management for more than three decades. Pickhardt joined as CEO in 2001, bringing deep experience in building and scaling enterprise technology. During his tenure, he has led Pharos through a fundamental transformation from traditional on-premises software to a modern, cloud-native SaaS platform.
“The business world has changed dramatically in recent years, especially when it comes to technology,” Pickhardt says. “But most organizations still manage print with legacy systems that rely on on-prem servers, disconnected workflows, and complex infrastructure that creates headaches for IT and hides the true cost of printing. Our software empowers organizations to eliminate unnecessary infrastructure, gain visibility into print data, and meet the needs of today’s hybrid workforce.”
Pharos minimizes disruptions by improving IT efficiency
Traditional print environments have the capacity to drain an organization’s IT resources. IT teams must maintain aging print servers that require constant patching. They’re called upon to troubleshoot inconsistent drivers across devices and operating systems. They also must respond to security audits that reveal vulnerabilities in legacy infrastructure.
If IT teams fall behind in keeping up with print management needs, systems go offline and work gets disrupted. When companies switch to Pharos, IT overhead is reduced and system reliability is increased.
“Moving from on-premises print servers to Pharos’s cloud print management platform fundamentally changes how IT supports the company’s systems and employees,” Pickhardt says. “Instead of firefighting, IT shifts to a proactive role that accelerates broader modernization efforts. Consequently, cloud migration is increasingly seen not as an option but as an urgent IT priority.”
With Pharos, organizations experience simplified driver management and fewer support tickets. New employees or devices can connect quickly without the need for IT to configure local drivers. And the total cost of ownership is lowered by eliminating server hardware costs and maintenance contracts.
Pharos minimizes disruptions by strengthening security
Print infrastructure is routinely excluded from enterprise threat models, which creates a blind spot that attackers can exploit. Because printing touches nearly every desktop endpoint and runs with elevated permissions in the operating system, when a breach occurs, the impact can spread quickly and cause disruptions that halt workflows and require costly recovery.
“Printers are not simple peripherals,” Pickhardt argues. “They are computing endpoints that decrypt, duplicate, and store sensitive data throughout the print lifecycle. If organizations don’t acknowledge that print infrastructure is part of the attack surface, they leave a vulnerable core system unprotected.”
Pharos built its cloud platform to extend Zero Trust principles to print management by shifting from device-centric trust to identity-centric authorization. It leverages a centralized policy approach to reduce the risk of shifting configurations and provides integrated reporting to increase visibility across users, devices, and networks.
“With Pharos, print doesn’t remain a security blind spot,” Pickhardt says. “It becomes another effectively governed and observable part of the organization’s security posture.”
Pharos minimizes disruptions by addressing remote user conflicts
The growth of the hybrid workforce has become one of the biggest causes of enterprise print disruptions. Organizations that struggle to serve remote workers’ needs with legacy print systems must contend with an overwhelming volume of help desk tickets seeking assistance with setting up or debugging printer issues. And employees of those organizations face the frustration of connecting to company networks or using VPNs to print to company printers.
Pharos changes the game by providing a print platform that works wherever an organization’s employees work. It reduces help desk tickets by providing a simple and consistent print experience to the multi-vendor fleet with no printer mapping required. It also allows employees to submit print jobs from a mobile app, workstation, or web upload anywhere they have internet access.
Maximizing workplace efficiency requires minimizing print system disruptions. In today’s workplace, that means relieving employees and IT teams of the challenges posed by legacy print servers. Shifting to Pharos allows organizations to deliver a seamless, intuitive print experience that keeps users productive and reduces help desk ticket volume.
“Organizations that want to reduce print disruptions turn to Pharos,” Pickhardt says. “Our industry-leading uptime and easy-to-use print workflows allow users to quickly and easily print anytime, anywhere.”
