MPS Monitor®, the company that develops and distributes the leading SaaS platform for the remote monitoring and management of printers and multifunctional devices, today announced the immediate availability of its new Data Collection Agent (DCA) version 4. The latest version brings a wealth of innovative and revolutionary features that are, in most cases, first to the market. Dealers and Managed Print Services providers can now benefit from instant, real-time access to devices, further integration with other market-leading solutions, and increased support and security.
DCA 4 is a complete redesign and rework of the award-winning MPS Monitor DCA. Over the last 12 years, it has been installed in more than half a million customer networks and is currently used by thousands of dealers to manage more than 1.2 million printing devices across 60 countries. To remain at the forefront of technology and provide further advanced and unique features to its customers, MPS Monitor decided on a clean-sheet redesign, using the latest IoT protocols and development environments. The new Data Collection Agent development, which took more than three years, involved a full-time and dedicated core development team.
As a result of this substantial effort, DCA 4 provides new and compelling features and functionalities, which are designed to revolutionize the way dealers and MPS providers remotely manage their print fleet:
Real-time connection: By using MQTT, one of the most modern IoT messaging protocols, DCA 4 allows direct, real-time communication between the user, the Agent, and the devices. The Agent also uses HTTP/2 – GRPC for traffic optimization and SSH for remote device access.
Device Web Access: Dealers, MPS Providers, and fleet managers can access and navigate the devices’ web pages from their browser while being located anywhere on the Internet, without the need for a remote connection to the customer’s network. The printer’s web server pages will appear in the MPS Monitor Portal’s device page in a matter of seconds, simply by clicking on a button. This feature is active on all printer brands and models. It does not require any additional access or software, and it has been thoroughly tested and certified to ensure it is highly secure.
Multi-platform: DCA 4 uses a single code base for all leading platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry), providing the same feature set and functions, regardless of the platform’s OS. Device Web Access and other new features are available on all platforms without any difference.
Granular data collection: it is now possible to define, for each different type of data (meters, consumable levels, alerts, messages, etc.), how often each type has to be updated. Only changed data are sent to the cloud to increase the system’s efficiency and ensure real-time data management.
Optimised network discovery: a complete redesign of the discovery process allows improved stability and efficiency, while greatly simplifying the troubleshooting process in critical network environments.
Improved security: DCA 4 is built with a strict “security-by-design” approach, further mitigating the risk that the DCA could be used as an attack vector to the customer’s network. It also fully supports SNMP v3 and device authentication, to ensure maximum device security.
Better supportability: in scenarios where problems with a device’s data have been identified, MPS Monitor’s support team already has available in the system all the information needed to troubleshoot reading issues like wrong meters or levels. There’s no need anymore to contact the customer and ask for remote sessions or manual data extraction for troubleshooting purposes, bringing added convenience and speeding up problem resolution.
PaperCut integration: as previously announced, customers where a DCA 4 and a PaperCut MF/NG instance are present, can enjoy a full Business Intelligence experience on their PaperCut data from within the MPS Monitor cloud Portal, without any additional software installation nor any additional license costs.
All the above features are available immediately to all MPS Monitor users by simply installing the new DCA 4 on the network where printers are connected. DCA 4 can co-exist with the previous version 3 of the DCA – even on the same system – and all the advanced features present in version 3 are supported in DCA 4 as well. This includes the exclusive DCA Clustering feature, which minimizes downtime and ensures data collection continuity.
Current MPS Monitor users can download DCA 4 using their MPS Monitor cloud Portal accounts, while Dealers and MPS providers interested in adopting MPS Monitor and testing DCA 4 can get a free trial of the platform from Oberon Americas.
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About Oberon Americas
Oberon Americas is the exclusive provider of our IoT-Cloud Based MPS Platform powered by MPS Monitor for the Americas region, offering to dealers, OEM’s, Toner Manufacturers, Resellers and Fortune 500 companies the most reliable, flexible, and secure Next Generation Managed Print Cloud Platforms for all your printing services. Our team is building the Internet of Printers® 2030, with the most comprehensive middleware platform which helps print dealers and OEM’s monitor and monetize 100% of their machines in the field.
With more than 1,000,000 printing devices and 30 billion pages monitored each year on over 150,000 end users, MPS Monitor is one of the major IoT software solutions globally for monitoring printing devices and the provision of Managed Print Services. MPS Monitor provides a comprehensive SaaS platform for monitoring and managing printers, available on the cloud, and equipped with a full set of APIs for integrating external software solutions. Its highly scalable and high-performing data collection technology allows Dealers/VARs, large end-users, manufacturers, and retailers of printer consumables to satisfy any need associated with the management of printing devices, recording of page volumes, and supply of toner in an automatic and controlled way. The MPS Monitor Cloud service is managed within an ISO/IEC 27001:2014 certified Information Security Management System and guarantees full compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Recently, MPS Monitor successfully completed the System and Organization Controls 2 Type 1 (SOC 2 Type 1) audit. The company has collaborations with key technology industry leaders, including Microsoft, HP, Okta, Asolvi and Zebra Technologies, while some of the industry’s most respected organisations – including IDC, Quocirca and Keypoint Intelligence – have endorsed MPS Monitor’s solutions. In addition to its founding office in Milan, Italy, MPS Monitor has a presence in the UK, from where it is spearheading its global expansion plans.
The latest release from “Quocirca’s Global Print Security Landscape 2022” report reveals that many organizations struggle to keep up with print security demands in today’s hybrid work environment.
Organizations need to look at investing and ensuring that the print environment is secured to the same levels expected across any other area of the IT platform.
We at Oberon Americas, as MPS Monitor providers for the Americas Region, are excited to cite a paragraph from this report:
“MPS Monitor adopts a holistic approach to the security of the entire print environment. The platform offers a robust set of security features and capabilities to protect data, user accounts, and infrastructure; provide device security services to end customers, enable cloud print services through a secure cloud-like Microsoft Azure, as well as remote monitoring without a DCA.”
MPS Monitor integrates PaperCut data to provide print management analytics and reporting from the cloud. Dealers and customers using PaperCut now have access to pre-built dashboards and reports through the award-winning BI capabilities integrated into MPS Monitor SaaS service.
MPS Monitor®, the company that develops and distributes the leading SaaS platform for the remote monitoring and management of printers and multifunctional devices, has announced the integration of PaperCut MF and Papercut NG print management data into its Analytics BI platform. This integration aims to provide a feature-rich Business Intelligence and reporting environment to image dealers and Managed Print Services end customers who use the PaperCut MF and Papercut NG platforms for print management, job accounting, and secure printing.
MPS Monitor Analytics is a full and comprehensive BI platform designed for imaging dealers, printer resellers, and Managed Print Services providers, based entirely on Microsoft’s Power BI Embedded technology. The solution enables users to access a full BI environment from within their MPS Monitor web portal – all without the need for separate accounts, different portals, or additional licensing. Users have access to a full self-service BI experience with the ability to modify existing dashboards and reports, or they can create new ones extremely easily, without any coding or previous BI skills. The company recently announced that its BI environment had been the subject of an extensive feature published on the Customer Stories showcase of Microsoft’s global corporate site. Through the integration of data coming from PaperCut MF, MPS Monitor is substantially enriching its BI capabilities by importing into its Analytics system all the data that PaperCut is able to export using standard Data Integration features.
A typical PaperCut MF instance produces a vast amount of historical, unstructured data related to all the aspects of managed print: type and size of documents printed, users and departments who print, cost of each single print job, environmental impact of print activities and savings generated by the implementation of print policies, rules, and best practices. This valuable and extensive dataset can now be merged inside the MPS Monitor Power BI Embedded database. All the raw data generated by PaperCut MF is transformed into stunning visuals with advanced filtering and slicing features, drill-through capabilities meaningful aggregations.
The result is a massive increase in the ability to create insights and data visualizations by leveraging the power of real-time data coming from devices to analyze user behaviors, identify and compare costs, analyze printing patterns and implement optimization strategies on each print fleet where PaperCut MF or Papercut NG is active.
Dealers and Managed Print providers can take advantage of these extensive reporting and analytics capabilities to perform quarterly or monthly business reviews with their customers, who conversely may access Analytics reports and dashboards with their print usage data at any given moment, in real-time and from the cloud, by simply accessing the MPS Monitor Portal. The PaperCut MF and PaperCut NG integration does not need any additional software installation or specific setup, as it is powered by the same MPS Monitor DCA that is used to collect data and monitor printing devices. The functionality is available to all customers running the latest version of MPS Monitor DCA at no additional cost.
Commenting on this announcement, Nicola De Blasi, CEO of MPS Monitor, said: “We believe that Business Intelligence can be a real game-changer for the imaging industry. Combining in a single platform the granularity and depth of data accumulated by a PaperCut server, the power, and ease of use of Power BI Embedded, with the advantages of a cloud-only architecture, makes this integration an exceptional add-on to MPS Monitor’s overall value proposition. The benefit of this is even more compelling as it does not require any specific on-prem installation nor any additional license cost. We expect that dealers and customers using both MPS Monitor, and PaperCut will love being able to immediately enjoy the advanced BI and reporting on PaperCut, with zero extra effort.”
Stu Brookes, EMEA Head of Channel & Alliances, PaperCut, said: “In the current climate, Resellers and End Users are looking for competitive advantage, increased insight and the ability to turn data into information to help improve business decisions. The integration created by MPS Monitor allows our mutual customers to maximise their investment in both print management and fleet management, providing the BI platform that adds value at all steps in identifying opportunities to reduce costs and improve digital document processes.”
Dealers interested in adopting MPS Monitor can get a free trial of the platform from www.mpsmonitor.com
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About Oberon Americas
Oberon Americas is the exclusive provider of our IoT-Cloud Based MPS Platform powered by MPS Monitor for the Americas region, offering to dealers, OEM’s, Toner Manufacturers, Resellers and Fortune 500 companies the most reliable, flexible, and secure Next Generation Managed Print Cloud Platforms for all your printing services.
Our team is building the Internet of Printers® 2030, with the most comprehensive middleware platform which helps print dealers and OEM’s monitor and monetize 100% of their machines in the field.
With more than 1,000,000 printing devices and 30 billion pages monitored each year on over 150,000 end users, MPS Monitor is one of the major IoT software solutions globally for monitoring printing devices and the provision of Managed Print Services. MPS Monitor provides a comprehensive SaaS platform for monitoring and managing printers, available on the cloud, and equipped with a full set of APIs for integrating external software solutions. Its highly scalable and high-performing data collection technology allows Dealers/VARs, large end-users, manufacturers, and retailers of printer consumables to satisfy any need associated with the management of printing devices, recording of page volumes, and supply of toner in an automatic and controlled way. The MPS Monitor Cloud service is managed within an ISO/IEC 27001:2014 certified Information Security Management System and guarantees full compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Recently, MPS Monitor successfully completed the System and Organization Controls 2 Type 1 (SOC 2 Type 1) audit. The company has collaborations with key technology industry leaders, including Microsoft, HP, Okta, Asolvi and Zebra Technologies, while some of the industry’s most respected organisations – including IDC, Quocirca and Keypoint Intelligence – have endorsed MPS Monitor’s solutions. In addition to its founding office in Milan, Italy, MPS Monitor has a presence in the UK, from where it is spearheading its global expansion plans.
About PaperCut Software
Around the world, people continue to wrestle with printing costs and complexity – and PaperCut is solving both one workplace at a time. Since 1998, PaperCut has helped over 115 million users in 195 countries save over a billion pages of paper. Today, businesses of all shapes and sizes enjoy unbeatable control, security, and savings in their printing. Learn more at www.papercut.com.
The latest MPS Monitor’s global marketing campaign, ‘Why it’s time for dealers to move to MPS Monitor 2.0.’, does not only encourage print dealers to migrate to MPS Monitor 2.0. but also, proactively trigger new dealers who don’t currently offer a print monitoring service to their customers.
MPS Monitor makes a difference from other print monitoring services due to its unique ease of use, reliability, data flow, and its robust security and flexibility. Thesefeatures make it the optimal choice for any dealer who manages a fleet of printing devices.
Dealers benefit from offering MPS Monitor 2.0 because it enables them to improve service levels, reduce costs, increase margins, and create new revenue streams. Furthermore, the data reliability and increased security of MPS Monitor offers greater loyalty and stability between dealers and their customers. Dealers’ customers benefit from MPS Monitor solution because it gives them full visibility into their print, enriched with reports, factual data, and historical analyses updated in real-time.
To help dealers migrate or adopt MPS Monitor 2.0, the company has created multiple assets. These include Migration Home Page (Change your route!) on MPS Monitor’s website that encourages visitors to download an informative eBook entitled‘Your MPS Monitor Adoption Journey Starts here’ to communicate MPS Monitor’s value proposition among the dealer community. As MPS Monitor is expanding worldwide, the eBook is available in English, Italian, German, French, and Spanish.
Of particular note is the eBook and its key value-add component. Its interactiveGap Analysis Tool. It will enable dealers to compare the platform they are currently using with the features and functions of the MPS Monitor 2.0 platform. With just a few clicks, dealers can check if their current solution’s security parameters, integration, DCA technology, consumable logistics, contract management, and advanced data analysis functions are supported by a state-of-the-art technology, which is compatible with the industry standards and market demands.
In the case of a dealer’s current platform lacking any essential features offered by MPS Monitor 2.0, the eBook provides a detailed guide to help dealers start migrating to MPS Monitor.
Commenting on its dealer recruitment drive, Nicola De Blasi, CEO of MPS Monitor, said: “In the last 15 months, dealers have proved, helping their customers to adopt hybrid working models successfully.
With more people working and printing from home, print has adapted to this shift. Therefore, there has never been a better time for dealers to help their customers bring their print fleet back under control, either by migrating to MPS Monitor 2.0 or introducing it as their remote monitoring and management solution for printers and multifunction devices.” He added: “MPS Monitor has a track record of helping dealers deliver exceptional results, thanks to its ease of use, reliability of its data flow, robust security and flexibility; all of this combine to ensure that dealers and their end-users can enjoy a rapid ROI. This is imperative, given that businesses are now working to recover from the pandemic. We believe that our migration campaign and recruitment drive will help dealers drive new revenue streams. At the same time, the customers they serve will benefit from optimized efficiency, visibility, and simplicity of print management.”
MPS Monitor is endorsed by some of the industry’s reputable organizations, including IDC. It considers MPS Monitor “a strategic player in the market, providing added value to customers and channel partners alike with a robust solution that offers capabilities beyond traditional device management platforms.” Meanwhile, Quocirca included it in its Print Security Landscape 2020, stating that “MPS Monitor 2.0 is a cloud-based print management platform that offers a robust solution for MPS providers and channel partners to provide integrated print management to their customers.” Furthermore, the platform has also been highlighted in Quocirca’s Cloud Print Services Report 2021 and the podcast series “In The Spotlight with Quocirca.” Additionally, in 2020, KeyPoint Intelligence awarded the platform with a Platinum Rating and a BLI Pick Award for Outstanding Fleet Management Solution. MPS Monitor also earned a Security Validation Testing Seal for its security capabilities on HP devices.
About Oberon Americas
Oberon Americas is the exclusive provider of our IoT-Cloud Based MPS Platform powered by MPS Monitor, for the Americas region, offering to dealers, OEM’s, Toner Manufacturers, Resellers and Fortune 500 companies the most reliable, flexible, and secure Next Generation Managed Print Cloud Platforms for all your printing services.
Our team is building the Internet of Printers® 2030, with the most comprehensive middleware platform which helps print dealers and OEM’s monitor and monetize 100% of their machines in the field. www.OberonAmericas.cominfo@OberonAmericas.com
MPS Monitor®, the company that develops and distributes the leading platform for the remote monitoring and management of printers and multifunctional devices, has announced a partnership with gap intelligence, values-led market intelligence firm. The goal of this partnership is to provide additional value to the imaging dealer’s community through improved business analytics and market intelligence, deeply integrated into MPS Monitor’s award-winning Analytics BI platform.
MPS Monitor provides its users with an extremely advanced and complete Business Intelligence environment, fully integrated in its remote monitoring and management SaaS platform, which is used by more than 2,000 dealers in 60 countries. MPS Monitor Analytics is a full and comprehensive BI platform designed for imaging dealers, printer resellers and Managed Print Services providers, based entirely on Microsoft Power Bi Embedded technology. The solution enables users to access a full BI environment from within their MPS Monitor web portal – all without the need for separate accounts, different portals, or additional licensing. Users have access to a full self-service BI experience with the ability to modify existing dashboards and reports, or to create new ones from scratch with extreme ease of use, without any coding or even previous BI skills. The company recently announced that its BI environment has been the subject of an extensive feature published on the Customer Stories showcase of Microsoft’s global corporate site.
One common challenge for most remote monitoring tools is the limited ability to deliver valued insights and useful reporting, because of the lack of standardization of datapoints collected by devices. Printers have a limited ability to identify themselves using standard models and are often not able to provide sufficient information on their technical specifications, consumable part numbers, market age and energy consumption.
Through the partnership with gap intelligence, MPS Monitor is able to substantially enrich its BI features, by adding extensive market visibility and additional insights. gap intelligence provides an extremely complete and updated dataset of market information and product specifications coming from its internal expertise and its continuous monitoring activity of the print industry: millions of datapoints containing product specifications and configurations, consumables associations, dates of announcement and retirement from the market, energy consumption – and, many others – are now available for each single standard model for all main printer manufaturers.
This valuable and extensive dataset is now merged inside the MPS Monitor Cloud datawarehouse on which the Analytics system runs. The result is a massive increase in the ability to create insights and data visualisations, by leveraging the power of real-time data coming from devices together with extensive market data and product specifications. A new MPS Monitor feature, called Standard Models Association, will enable users to take advantage of these increased Analytics capabilities in a very simple and guided way.
Commenting on this announcement, Nicola De Blasi, CEO of MPS Monitor, said: “BI and predictive analytics are some of the most powerful tools in the hands of dealers and Managed Print Service providers, for future-proofing their business health and securing their profitability. That’s why at MPS Monitor we are investing so extensively in providing self-service BI capabilities to all our users. By partnering with gap intelligence, we can further enhance the breadth and depth of insights that our platform provides and really empower our customers’ sales, operations and finance teams to tranform their fleets’ raw data into valuable intelligence. Through the merger of this new dataset into the MPS Monitor database, we enable every user to know everything about every device, and not just what’s happening in real time, but also about what will happen in the future.”
CEO of gap intelligence, Gary Peterson, shared, “Getting accurate, complete, and timely data is critical to making smart business decisions. We are thrilled that our casual micro and macro level data is part of MPS Monitor’s solution to drive results. Our MPS Monitor and gap intelligence partnership empowers organizations through actionable insights.”
The gap intelligence dataset integration is immediately available to all MPS Montior Portal users by accessing the new Standard Models function just released.
Dealers interested in adopting MPS Monitor can get a free trial of the platform from www.OberonAmericas.com
About gap intelligence
gap intelligence is a values-led company that works with manufacturers, resellers, and industry players within the information technology, imaging, consumer electronics, and home appliance industries to bring them up-to-the-minute market intelligence. The company was recognized as one of San Diego Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work”.
About Oberon Americas
Oberon Americas is the exclusive provider of our IoT-Cloud Based MPS Platform powered by MPS Monitor, for the Americas region, offering to dealers, OEM’s, Toner Manufacturers, Resellers and Fortune 500 companies the most reliable, flexible, and secure Next Generation Managed Print Cloud Platforms for all your printing services.
Our team is building the Internet of Printers® 2030, with the most comprehensive middleware platform which helps print dealers and OEM’s monitor and monetize 100% of their machines in the field. www.OberonAmericas.cominfo@OberonAmericas.com
Kodak Alaris channel partners can now leverage MPS Monitor 2.0 platform for full visibility on their managed scanning devices
MPS Monitor®, the developer and distributor of the leading platform for the remote monitoring and management of printers and multifunctional devices, today announced that MPS Monitor 2.0 is now available to monitor document scanners from Kodak Alaris. Consequently, Kodak Alaris channel partners who offer managed scan services to their customers can now benefit from MPS Monitor 2.0’s advanced technology to automatically monitor scanning devices and securely collect all the data about their customers’ scans.
Kodak Alaris is a leading supplier of information capture solutions aimed at simplifying business processes, leveraging decades of innovation in the field of image science. Accurate, high-quality document scanning, along with intelligent software and reliable services from Kodak Alaris, provide customers with a powerful competitive advantage. The firm’s award-winning range of scanners, software and services is available worldwide through Kodak Alaris’ network of channel partners.
The integration of Kodak Alaris within the MPS Monitor 2.0 platform is possible through the MPS Capture Agent from Kodak Alaris. Thanks to the automation achieved in the data collection process, Kodak Alaris channel partners have complete control of pay-per-scan contracts with their customers, streamlining operations related to invoicing. Data can also be used to predict volume and consumption, with a continuous comparison between forecasts and actual use, and they are also able to monitor the lamp’s usage and duration.