Imagine preparing handouts for an important meeting, only to find the printer isn’t responding or the printout doesn’t match what you see on your screen. When the printing process doesn’t meet user expectations, the printer is often perceived as the culprit, even if there is nothing wrong with the device. This leads to unnecessary help desk calls, increased costs, and frustration for end users and IT teams alike. As the enterprise workforce becomes more mobile and the demands on printers more complex, businesses expect a reliable and consistent print experience from all print paths for all print jobs.
In the past, office printing was relatively straightforward. Print jobs typically came from a PC, documents were mostly text-based and were sent directly to the printer via a direct connection from the PC's parallel or serial port. This simple setup and its supporting technologies of the time ensured that what appeared on the computer screen was translated into printed output.
Today, office printing is trying to keep up with the evolving demands of the distributed workforce. Print jobs no longer originate solely from PCs — they come from various sources including (but not limited to) laptops, mobile devices, cloud repositories, flash drives, and even directly from the printer itself. Additionally, modern print jobs increasingly contain high-resolution images, data visualizations, detailed vector graphics, intricate design elements, and more objects that require sophisticated print processing. Knowledge workers now expect to be able to print from anywhere — whether at office, home, remotely, or "on the go". These shifts have made the print process significantly more complex. Even innovations like "driverless" printing, which aim to simplify the user experience, have added layers of "behind-the-scenes" complexity towards achieving the desired printing experience. As office printing becomes more complex, there’s a growing need for a print technology that can seamlessly handle the complexity - and that's where PDF comes in!
