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Scenario: The university

West Face University has a student population of 10,000 full-time students and off-campus and part-time students. IT services centrally control the network, however, individual faculties and departments also offer and manage some of the specialist IT infrastructure. All major operating systems are in used on both the workstations and servers.

Requirements

  1. Centrally managed printers are hosted in a clustered print serverA print server is a system responsible for hosting print queues and sharing printer resources to desktops. Users submit print jobs to a print server rather then directly to the printer itself. A print server can be a dedicated server but on many networks this server also performs other tasks, such as file serving environment. The solution needs to support clusteringClustering allows your organisation to ensure your services are not affected if anything should happen to your main server. PaperCut is a cluster compatible application and is supported under Windows (Microsoft Cluster Server / MSCS, Microsoft Failover Cluster Manager / MSFCM, Vetitas Cluster Server / VCS) and Linux (Novell Cluster Services / NCS, Linux-HA) at all levels of the application, including: clustering at the print spooler service layer by integrating with clustering services, failover based clustering at the Application Server layer using clustering services, and at the database layer by utilising cluster aware databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or Oracle..

  2. IT services wants to provide the option for department labs to also have their printers controlled via the central system.

  3. Client software needs to be optional. It would be preferable for students to have access to their account details via a web browser.

  4. The design of the web interface should be customizable.

  5. The system must be secure and support SSLSecure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. The protocol uses a third party, a Certificate Authority (CA), to identify one end or both end of the transactions. To be able to create an SSL connection a web server requires an SSL certificate. When you choose to activate SSL on your web server you will be prompted to complete a number of questions about the identity of your website and your company. Your web server then creates two cryptographic keys - a Private Key and a Public Key.-based encryption.

  6. The system should run on top of a database system and allow data access to facilitate custom reports using packages such as Crystal Reports.

  7. An open source system would be preferable.

Implementation

  • Initial installation

    University-wide deployments can be quite involved. Most large universities that have deployed PaperCut MF have worked closely with the PaperCut MF development team during implementation. A lot can be gained by arranging a teleconference or similar with the development team. We're always happy to help our customers deploy the ideal solution.

  • Requirement 3

    PaperCut MF's client software is optional in a basic charging/quota environment. Users can access their accounts and view their account balance, transaction and printing history, and use advanced tools such as TopUp/Pre-Paid Cards and transfers. More information on the web-based users tools is available at Interface levels.

  • Requirement 7

    PaperCut MF is a commercial system with commercial level support. However, unlike many other commercial applications, PaperCut Software International Pty. Ltd. does offer source code access. A number of universities have used the source code access for:

    • auditing - verifying that the software is secure.

    • customization - knowing how the application works and how to implement add-ons.

    Large universities should also look at the large school scenario. Features such as shared accounts and secure printing are also applicable to many university environments.