C A S E S T U DY
Kiosk Software Brings Secure User Payments to Mobile Printing
By Caroline Cooper Contributing writer, KioskMarketplace.com
Sponsored by:
PrinterOn partnered with PROVISIO to provide on-the-spot payments and enhanced security for mobile printing customers.
The players PROVISIO is a market-leading software engineering company providing comprehensive turnkey products to secure, monitor and control computers and kiosks in a public environment. The company sells its software products in more than 50 countries through offices in the United States and Europe. Fortune 500 companies, including Verizon Wireless, OfficeMax, BMW and Citibank have chosen PROVISIO’s software solutions for projects on more than 1,000 machines. PrinterOn is a leading mobile-printing solution provider. The company’s PrintSpots solution allows users to print documents to any compatible printer via the cloud.
The PrintSpots mobile-printing solution has been deployed in more than 35 countries. PrinterOn is based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, and has been providing document-handling solutions for more than 25 years.
The challenge When Steve Spicer founded PrinterOn Corp. in 2000, he envisioned a world where busy, on-the-move consumers and businesspeople could print documents to public locations from their mobile devices. “Our founder kind of looked at the world, looked at the market, looked at our history and had the view that the world was going
PrinterOn enables users to send and print documents from any smartphone, tablet or laptop in a way that uses the Internet for submission, encryption and delivery of printed documents.
© 2011 NetWorld Alliance LLC | Sponsored by PROVISIO
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Kiosk Software Brings Secure User Payments to Mobile Printing
The integrated Internet content filter, email client and support for external programs, such as Microsoft Office programs, as well as remote monitoring and management with SiteRemote, provides users with features they need while simplifying the administrator’s duties. — Heinz Horstmann, CEO, PROVISIO
mobile,” said Ken Noreikis, PrinterOn’s vice president of sales and marketing. “People on the go with their mobile devices, whether their mobile device was a laptop or a smartphone, would want to be able to connect to a printer and to print. So we built the world’s first mobile-printing solution.” In its earliest stages, the PrinterOn solution allowed guests in its clients’ facilities, such as the Hilton Garden Inn, to print documents wirelessly from their rooms to on-site printers. “From a user perspective, just follow the basic steps and you’re able to print in public,” Noreikis said. “Just identify the printer — no driver, no software involved.” PrinterOn soon expanded its solution to other Hilton hotel brands. But the company had designs on what would later be coined “the cloud” and began working with clients, such as coffee shops, airport lounges and public libraries. End users could simply choose a PrintSpots location and email documents to a PrinterOn address, which would respond with a secure retrieval code for the user to enter upon picking up the document. The PrinterOn mobile application came later, and the company even offers a GPS printer-locating functionality in a version of the application for HewlettPackard technology. More recently, PrinterOn decided to expand its mobile-printing presence in © 2011 NetWorld Alliance LLC | Sponsored by PROVISIO
Europe and Asia, partnering with Irelandbased Internet-kiosk provider Surfbox to offer mobile transmission to public printers in locations where Surfbox terminals already existed. But in the European market, Noreikis said, Surfbox and PrinterOn deployers tend to charge end users per print job. Now, PrinterOn needed a way to enable on-thespot payments for mobile-printing customers. The company also required kiosk software to secure the Internet kiosks to which its printers were attached.
The solution PrinterOn was able to turn to one software engineering company, Miami-based PROVISIO, to meet both its user payment and security needs. Because SiteKiosk, PROVISIO’s flagship kiosk software, is fully customizable, the two companies were able to work together to tailor its functionality to the PrinterOn/Surfbox mobile-printing installations. “PROVISIO enabled the partners in the market to modify the service,” Noreikis said. Because SiteKiosk can enable a credit card reader and cash acceptor on the kiosk, PrinterOn and Surfbox clients could offer end users whatever payment model worked best for their deployment scenario, whether it was in a coffee shop, a hotel lobby or an airport lounge. “PROVISIO is a strong engineering company, and they’re product-focused, and PrinterOn has the same approach to
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Kiosk Software Brings Secure User Payments to Mobile Printing
the market,” Noreikis said. “So from the product-deployment perspective, it really worked.” Aside from the user payment issue, PrinterOn also needed to make sure the components at the Surfbox kiosks would remain completely secure, given their deployment in public locations and their high level of user traffic. Conveniently, PROVISIO’s SiteKiosk provided a lockdown solution for the PrinterOn software that enables the public printing, so users can’t access the computer and printer configurations, keeping them safe from viruses and other dangers. SiteKiosk also protects the users themselves, ensuring that any personal information, user names and passwords are wiped clean from the configuration after the user logs off of the public PC. “Our preferred deployment model is to have our printing software installed on the PC and have it underneath the SiteKiosk software so that our mobile printing solution can stay up and running, as opposed to just installing it on the PC and having a user be able to get into our software on a PC in public,” Noreikis said. “The flexibility of our software allows different configurations to suit the widely varying requirements of public PC and printer deployments,” said Heinz Horstmann, CEO of PROVISIO. “Along with offering several payment options, our software provides many features which have proven to be useful on public computers. The integrated Internet content filter, email client and support for external programs, such as Microsoft Office programs, as well as remote monitoring and management with SiteRemote provides users with features they need while simplifying the administrator’s duties. The
© 2011 NetWorld Alliance LLC | Sponsored by PROVISIO
positive feedback from Surfbox shows that PrinterOn and PROVISIO’s combined solution provides an enhanced user experience.”
The results In 2010, PrinterOn processed more than 10 million pages through its mobileprinting service, and the company now has more the 6,000 public printing locations around the world. But the company’s partnership with PROVISIO has given it an even greater expansion opportunity in recent months. Thanks in part to the capabilities PROVISIO’s SiteKiosk software offers, the company has been able to expand its global presence even further with the Surfbox deployment model. “We’re going to have 150 hotels and airports deployed with the solution in Ireland by the end of June,” Noreikis said. “That’s a nice deployment, because until we partnered with Surfbox and PROVISIO, we did not have an installed base in Ireland.” About the sponsor: PROVISIO, based in Miami, is a market-leading software engineering company providing comprehensive turnkey software products to secure, monitor and control computers and kiosks in a public environment. The company sells its software products in more than 50 countries through offices in the United States and Europe. Fortune 500 companies, including Verizon Wireless, OfficeMax, BMW and Citibank, have chosen PROVISIO’s software solutions for projects on more than 1,000 machines.
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