HP ePrint
Encyclopedia
HP ePrint is a portfolio of cloud printing solutions specifically designed for mobile computing devices like smartphones, tablets, etc. This segment of the computing industry has been rapidly growing and transforming the traditional cell phones into universal information access tools. As this data usage trend continues there becomes a greater need for printing and sharing data accessed by the mobile devices. HP ePrint, as well as other mobile solutions are an attempt to solve this issue. The main difference between HP ePrint and other solutions like HP iPrint or Apple AirPrint
is that ePrint is a solution developed with cloud computing technology.
The current portfolio of HP ePrint solutions includes three distinct offerings:
) and subsequently forwarded to the HP ePrint printer.
Any email client, including those used with smartphones, can be used to submit a print job to an HP ePrint printer. Users can send an email message with one or more attachments and the HP ePrint cloud print server will separate the attachments, render them individually and repackage the data into a print stream that prints the entire print job. Basically, if you can email you can print. The following “plain data” formats are currently supported:
Registered users can also log into the HP ePrint Center to check the status of previously submitted print jobs as well as configuring personal preferences like approved list of users for the ePrint printers or spam filters to prevent unwanted print requests. Users can also change an ePrint printer’s email address by requesting a new one from HP.
Figure 1 illustrates how data flows from the email client to the HP ePrint public cloud server(HP ePrint Center) to be rendered into an acceptable print stream format and then forwarded to the actual HP ePrint device.
iPhones and Android devices from the iTunes
App store or the Android Market
, respectively. The HP ePrint app is also available for Blackberry mobile devices from BlackBerry App World
. Figure 2 shows the data flowchart for the HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solution.
Once installed, mobile users can easily access a list of public print services and submit print jobs accordingly. A notification email message is returned to the mobile user which also includes an authorization code which is required to actually print the documents at the service provider’s location. This process prevents unwanted documents from printing and allows paying for print jobs before they are actually printed. The cost of public printing services may vary from one provider to another. There is no practical limit to the number of copies printed. An example of this service is a presenter who prints handouts just in time at the destinations instead of carrying them everywhere they travel.
The HP ePrint app uses your GPS coordinates to locate and map public printers near you. Many HP ePrint Mobile Printing Locations are powered by PrinterOn. With HP ePrint and the PrinterOn network of public printers—called PrintSpots®—mobile professionals will have many public printing choices around the world. Common print providers can be found at FedEx
office stores, Hilton hotels
, Air Canada
membership clubs as well as the large number of PrintSpots provided by PrinterOn. Regardless of location, mobile professionals can use smartphone navigation features for directions to the print service provider’s location.
Supported file formats for email attachments using HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solutions include:
To submit print jobs, mobile users email attachments to the printer’s unique email address which routes the print request to PrinterOn’s cloud printing service. The HP ePrint app simplifies this process by presenting the user a friendly user interface that includes an option to find public PrintSpots. Upon reception of the user’s email message (with attachments), the PrinterOn service renders each attachment accordingly and sends the print data stream (PCL or Postscript) to the destination printer via the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP
). To retrieve the actual print job, users arrive at the printer location and use a kiosk to enter an authorization code which releases the print job(s). Figure 3 is a screenshot of the HP ePrint App running on an iPhone device.
The same HP ePrint app used for HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solution is used for HP ePrint Enterprise. Users submitting print jobs can send them to private company printers or public print services. For private printers to show up in the list of available devices they have to be registered with the company’s installed HP ePrint Enterprise server (purchased separately).
The HP ePrint Enterprise server is an ASP.NET
application that is supported on Windows Server 2003
/2008. The following are the system requirements for the HP ePrint Enterprise server software:
The method for sending data to the actual print devices depends on the type of mobile device used (i.e., Blackberry, Android or iPhone) to submit the print request. Blackberry devices typically access network resources using the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) and Android mobile devices use a direct connection to the HP ePrint Enterprise server. Figure 4 illustrates the path taken by Blackberry print requests and Figure 5 shows the print path for Android and iPhone devices.
HP ePrint Enterprise is also a scalable solution that can adapt to varying workloads. A master/slave configuration can be employed where the primary workload is handled by slave HP ePrint Enterprise servers and backup or redundancy is provided by the one and only master HP Enterprise ePrint server. As the workload increases additional slave server can be deployed. Large companies geographically dispersed can have the master HP ePrint Enterprise server at corporate headquarters and slave HP ePrint Enterprise servers implemented within geographical regions. The master server is the primary point of communication which subsequently dispatches print jobs to appropriate slave servers. These reliability and scalability features of the HP ePrint Enterprise server are essential for cloud computing
architectures.
User experiences may vary slightly depending on which mobile platforms they are using to access the HP ePrint Enterprise server. Mobile platforms supported include BlackBerry
devices, iPhones and Android powered mobile phones. iPhones and Androids communicate directly with the HP ePrint Enterprise server whereas Blackberry devices communicate indirectly through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server
(BES). The BES is not an additional requirement because if a company is using Blackberry devices it’s already installed. Blackberry devices communicate with the BES which in turn communicates with the HP ePrint Enterprise server. There are major security and performance advantages with the Blackberry solution because the data does not travel outside the customer’s private network. Data is transferred from the Android and iPhone mobile devices to the HP ePrint Enterprise server so users have to wait a little longer. The channels used to submit the print data, however, are secured and encrypted channels. The following “plain data” formats are currently supported:
The HP ePrint Enterprise server communicates to external network resources using two primary protocols, HTTP and SMTP. HTTP is used to communicate job status messages to handheld devices, while SMTP is used as a vehicle to collect incoming print job data into the HP ePrint Enterprise printer queues. In other words, every HP ePrint Enterprise server print job must be an email first in order to enter into the workflow
process. Once accepted by the server’s SMTP service, the job is converted to the correct printer language (PCL or Postscript) via an internal rendering process and submitted to the actual print device via TCP port 9100. HP ePrint Enterprise server is capable of processing multiple print jobs simultaneously by using a message queue server that gives it the ability to track each print job’s progress individually.
HP ePrint Enterprise server does have administration requirements. To perform these tasks administrators can use the HP ePrint Enterprise server administration console. This console can be accessed from any authorized user with a supported web browser
. Administrative tasks include adding and managing users and print devices, configuring server settings, simple diagnostics, and event tracking.
AirPrint
AirPrint is a component of Apple iOS, version 4.2 or later, for printing via WiFi, either directly to any AirPrint compatible printers such as HP's entire ePrint range, select Brother models, all Epson models produced after fall 2011, or to non-compatible printers through a Windows, Mac or Linux PC...
is that ePrint is a solution developed with cloud computing technology.
The current portfolio of HP ePrint solutions includes three distinct offerings:
- HP ePrint Printer
- HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solution
- HP ePrint Enterprise
HP ePrint Printer
HP ePrint Printer is an HP device that contains the enabling ePrint technology in firmware. These cloud-aware printing devices can be registered with HP’s public ePrint cloud print server (hpeprintcenter.com). This issues and assigns a unique email address for the printer so that printing is as simple as emailing plain documents to the device. Plain documents are considered to be in native form like a Word document, a PowerPoint presentation, or a PDF document. The HP ePrint printer solution is considered a driver-less printing solution which basically means the plain data is sent to HP’s ePrint public cloud where the data is rendered into a suitable print data stream (PCL 5 or PostScriptPostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
) and subsequently forwarded to the HP ePrint printer.
Any email client, including those used with smartphones, can be used to submit a print job to an HP ePrint printer. Users can send an email message with one or more attachments and the HP ePrint cloud print server will separate the attachments, render them individually and repackage the data into a print stream that prints the entire print job. Basically, if you can email you can print. The following “plain data” formats are currently supported:
- MS Word (2007) documents
- MS PowerPoint presentation
- MS Outlook
- Image files (JPEGJPEGIn computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
, BMP, GIFGIFThe Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
, PNG, TIFF) - Adobe Acrobat files (PDFs)
- Text files and Rich Text FormatRich Text FormatThe Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation since 1987 for Microsoft products and for cross-platform document interchange....
(RTF) - HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
files
Registered users can also log into the HP ePrint Center to check the status of previously submitted print jobs as well as configuring personal preferences like approved list of users for the ePrint printers or spam filters to prevent unwanted print requests. Users can also change an ePrint printer’s email address by requesting a new one from HP.
Figure 1 illustrates how data flows from the email client to the HP ePrint public cloud server(HP ePrint Center) to be rendered into an acceptable print stream format and then forwarded to the actual HP ePrint device.
HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solution
HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solution is another cloud printing solution within the HP ePrint portfolio. This solution is specifically designed for mobile professionals who need to print while travelling. After installing a smartphone app users can see various public printing services offered at hotels, airports and print shops who have registered their public printing services. The free HP ePrint app is available for AppleApple
The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...
iPhones and Android devices from the iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
App store or the Android Market
Android Market
Android Market is an online software store developed by Google for Android OS devices. Its gateway is an application program called "Market", preinstalled on most Android devices, allows users to browse and download mobile apps published by third-party developers...
, respectively. The HP ePrint app is also available for Blackberry mobile devices from BlackBerry App World
BlackBerry App World
BlackBerry App World is an application distribution service and application by Research In Motion for a majority of BlackBerry devices. The service provides BlackBerry users with an environment to browse, download, and update third-party applications. The service went live on April 1, 2009...
. Figure 2 shows the data flowchart for the HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solution.
Once installed, mobile users can easily access a list of public print services and submit print jobs accordingly. A notification email message is returned to the mobile user which also includes an authorization code which is required to actually print the documents at the service provider’s location. This process prevents unwanted documents from printing and allows paying for print jobs before they are actually printed. The cost of public printing services may vary from one provider to another. There is no practical limit to the number of copies printed. An example of this service is a presenter who prints handouts just in time at the destinations instead of carrying them everywhere they travel.
The HP ePrint app uses your GPS coordinates to locate and map public printers near you. Many HP ePrint Mobile Printing Locations are powered by PrinterOn. With HP ePrint and the PrinterOn network of public printers—called PrintSpots®—mobile professionals will have many public printing choices around the world. Common print providers can be found at FedEx
FedEx
FedEx Corporation , originally known as FDX Corporation, is a logistics services company, based in the United States with headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee...
office stores, Hilton hotels
Hilton Hotels
Hilton Hotels & Resorts is an international chain of full-service hotels and resorts founded by Conrad Hilton and now owned by Hilton Worldwide. Hilton hotels are either owned by, managed by, or franchised to independent operators by Hilton Worldwide. Hilton Hotels became the first coast-to-coast...
, Air Canada
Air Canada
Air Canada is the flag carrier and largest airline of Canada. The airline, founded in 1936, provides scheduled and charter air transport for passengers and cargo to 178 destinations worldwide. It is the world's tenth largest passenger airline by number of destinations, and the airline is a...
membership clubs as well as the large number of PrintSpots provided by PrinterOn. Regardless of location, mobile professionals can use smartphone navigation features for directions to the print service provider’s location.
Supported file formats for email attachments using HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solutions include:
- Microsoft OfficeMicrosoft OfficeMicrosoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
(’95-2010) Word, Excel, PowerPoint - Microsoft VisioMicrosoft VisioMicrosoft Visio , formerly known as Microsoft Office Visio, is a commercial diagramming program for Microsoft Windows that uses vector graphics to create diagrams.- Features :...
- Open OfficeOpen officeOpen office may refer to:* OpenOffice.org, a free and open source suite of office productivity programs .* OpenOffice.org XML, a deprecated international file format used by earlier versions of OpenOffice.org....
(2.X/3.X) - StarOfficeStarOfficeStarOffice, known briefly as Oracle Open Office before its discontinuation in 2010, is a proprietary office suite. It was originally developed by StarDivision which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999...
(StarWriter, StarCalc, StarChart, StarDraw, StarImpress) - Adobe Acrobat (PDFs)
- Text and Rich Text Format
- Image files (PNG, BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF)
To submit print jobs, mobile users email attachments to the printer’s unique email address which routes the print request to PrinterOn’s cloud printing service. The HP ePrint app simplifies this process by presenting the user a friendly user interface that includes an option to find public PrintSpots. Upon reception of the user’s email message (with attachments), the PrinterOn service renders each attachment accordingly and sends the print data stream (PCL or Postscript) to the destination printer via the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP
IPP
-Science:* Isopentenyl pyrophosphate, a metabolite of both the mevalonate pathway and non-mevalonate pathway of isoprenoid biosynthesis* Ionospheric Pierce Point, the point where the line-of-sight between a satellite and ground station intersects an ionospheric shell model* Integrated Product...
). To retrieve the actual print job, users arrive at the printer location and use a kiosk to enter an authorization code which releases the print job(s). Figure 3 is a screenshot of the HP ePrint App running on an iPhone device.
HP ePrint Enterprise
HP ePrint Enterprise is the third component of the HP ePrint portfolio and is designed for SMB and large enterprise businesses who desire to manage their own private cloud printing service. This is important for businesses with a growing mobile community who require access to company network resources, like printing.The same HP ePrint app used for HP ePrint Mobile Printing Solution is used for HP ePrint Enterprise. Users submitting print jobs can send them to private company printers or public print services. For private printers to show up in the list of available devices they have to be registered with the company’s installed HP ePrint Enterprise server (purchased separately).
The HP ePrint Enterprise server is an ASP.NET
ASP.NET
ASP.NET is a Web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic Web sites, Web applications and Web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages ...
application that is supported on Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, introduced on 24 April 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on 6 December 2005...
/2008. The following are the system requirements for the HP ePrint Enterprise server software:
- Windows Server 2003 or 2008 R2 (32 or 64 bit)
- Microsoft Internet Information Services (IISInternet Information ServicesInternet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...
) - Microsoft SMTP server
- Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ)
- Microsoft Office (full installation)
- Microsoft Windows InstallerWindows InstallerThe Windows Installer is a software component used for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software on modern Microsoft Windows systems...
- Office Primary Interop Assemblies (PIA)
- Microsoft .NET Framework.NET FrameworkThe .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
(3.5) - Microsoft SQL ServerSQL ServerSQL Server may refer to:* Any database server that implements the Structured Query Language* Microsoft SQL Server, a relational database server from Microsoft* Sybase SQL Server, a relational database server developed by Sybase...
2008 (or Express)
The method for sending data to the actual print devices depends on the type of mobile device used (i.e., Blackberry, Android or iPhone) to submit the print request. Blackberry devices typically access network resources using the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) and Android mobile devices use a direct connection to the HP ePrint Enterprise server. Figure 4 illustrates the path taken by Blackberry print requests and Figure 5 shows the print path for Android and iPhone devices.
HP ePrint Enterprise is also a scalable solution that can adapt to varying workloads. A master/slave configuration can be employed where the primary workload is handled by slave HP ePrint Enterprise servers and backup or redundancy is provided by the one and only master HP Enterprise ePrint server. As the workload increases additional slave server can be deployed. Large companies geographically dispersed can have the master HP ePrint Enterprise server at corporate headquarters and slave HP ePrint Enterprise servers implemented within geographical regions. The master server is the primary point of communication which subsequently dispatches print jobs to appropriate slave servers. These reliability and scalability features of the HP ePrint Enterprise server are essential for cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
architectures.
User experiences may vary slightly depending on which mobile platforms they are using to access the HP ePrint Enterprise server. Mobile platforms supported include BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
devices, iPhones and Android powered mobile phones. iPhones and Androids communicate directly with the HP ePrint Enterprise server whereas Blackberry devices communicate indirectly through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server
BlackBerry Enterprise Server
BlackBerry Enterprise Server designates the middleware software package that is part of the BlackBerry wireless platform supplied by Research In Motion...
(BES). The BES is not an additional requirement because if a company is using Blackberry devices it’s already installed. Blackberry devices communicate with the BES which in turn communicates with the HP ePrint Enterprise server. There are major security and performance advantages with the Blackberry solution because the data does not travel outside the customer’s private network. Data is transferred from the Android and iPhone mobile devices to the HP ePrint Enterprise server so users have to wait a little longer. The channels used to submit the print data, however, are secured and encrypted channels. The following “plain data” formats are currently supported:
- MS Word (2007) documents
- MS PowerPoint presentation
- MS Outlook
- Image files (JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF)
- Adobe Acrobat files (PDFs)
- Text files and Rich Text Format (RTF)
- HTML files
The HP ePrint Enterprise server communicates to external network resources using two primary protocols, HTTP and SMTP. HTTP is used to communicate job status messages to handheld devices, while SMTP is used as a vehicle to collect incoming print job data into the HP ePrint Enterprise printer queues. In other words, every HP ePrint Enterprise server print job must be an email first in order to enter into the workflow
Workflow
A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
process. Once accepted by the server’s SMTP service, the job is converted to the correct printer language (PCL or Postscript) via an internal rendering process and submitted to the actual print device via TCP port 9100. HP ePrint Enterprise server is capable of processing multiple print jobs simultaneously by using a message queue server that gives it the ability to track each print job’s progress individually.
HP ePrint Enterprise server does have administration requirements. To perform these tasks administrators can use the HP ePrint Enterprise server administration console. This console can be accessed from any authorized user with a supported web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
. Administrative tasks include adding and managing users and print devices, configuring server settings, simple diagnostics, and event tracking.