“UniPrint provides us with a total solution for printer management that we can count on regardless of how complex our IT environment may become.”
Martin Marietta Ensures Anywhere, Any Device Printing with UniPrint Infinity in Citrix Environment
The Organization
Martin Marietta Materials is the second-largest producer of construction aggregates in the United States, supplying crushed stone, sand and gravel for use in roads, sidewalks and foundations.
Due to the nature of the aggregate business, its operation is highly dispersed, with over 300 facilities across 33 states.
The company deployed XenApp 6.5 on Windows Server 2008 to deliver over 140 applications, including specialty programs such as the JD Edwards ERP System, to a predominately remote user base of 3,200 internal employees and external vendors.
Its centralized Citrix server farm features more than 70 servers – most of which are virtualized. Printing volume is high and frequently comes from multiple applications.
The Challenge
Martin Marietta’s complex IT infrastructure, disparate environments, diverse internal and external user groups and demanding printing requirements presented great challenges.
About 90% of Martin Marietta’s users print remotely on heterogeneous client devices across platforms to a vast, non-standardized array of printers running the gamut from enterprise multiple function machines to consumer-grade local devices to specialized printers.
Without the UniPrint Universal Printer Driver (UPD), the large, highly variant network of facilities would have created many incompatibility issues between its various printer drivers and the sophisticated and sometimes niche applications the company runs. Compliance forms, dispatch reports, complex graphs and other documents need to be printed as and when required.
Users often print from far-flung locations with limited bandwidth. Sometimes they even print from barges, connecting to the company’s servers via air cards as they carry cargo down the Mississippi River.
Printing scenarios include locally-attached and network printers and even unknown printer models in undisclosed locations owned by external vendors.
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The Solution
Following the migration to Citrix XenApp 6.5 and consolidation of its applications into a single server farm in 2012, the company decided to upgrade from UniPrint Server 7 to UniPrint Infinity as a print platform to accommodate the company’s expansion and increasingly complex print output requirements.
UniPrint’s UPD solution consolidated Martin Marietta’s dispersed network of non-standardized printing devices into a single system.
It made managing the complex IT environment much more efficient by eliminating individual manufacturer drivers and solving all incompatibility issues.
In addition, UniPrint’s UPD is highly scalable, allowing new clients and printers to be added easily.
Another determining factor was the fact that, like previous versions of the printing software, UniPrint Infinity enables users to print from any location via any platform, including cloud.
With UniPrint’s PDF generator, low bandwidth issues haven’t hindered the abilities of employees at facilities near quarries or on barges to print, and third-party haulers can also use UniPrint’s software to print off of their own devices.
“We have over 70 Citrix servers, and if we had to manage every single print driver on every single Citrix server, it would be a full-time job, with several people working to maintain those drivers,” said David Jastrow, Client Services Manager, Martin Marietta.
“UniPrint provides us with a total solution for printer management that we can count on regardless of how complex our IT environment may become.”
For more than a decade, UniPrint has played a crucial role in enabling remote users across Martin Marietta’s network to seamlessly print across platforms and client devices and help administrators troubleshoot easily – even across a wide range of manufacturer printer drivers.
The Benefits
Using UniPrint Infinity across its widely dispersed, remotely located array of non-standardized printing devices has greatly simplified print management for Martin Marietta.
Key Benefits Include:
- Easy and reliable remote printing across platforms, from 140 different applications
- Highly scalable solution as printers and users are added
- Bandwidth optimization from compressed PDF files
- Ease of migration from previous UniPrint versions
- Reduced volume of printer-related help desk calls
