Smart printout management

Further to requests from the schools’ IT managers, the county municipality decided to organise document printing at the schools.

“We wanted to find a solution which corresponded with what the users wanted,” explains Øystein Kaldhol, systems administrator and advisor for the county municipality. “We therefore looked at both proprietary and Open Source alternatives. None of the products available met our requirements fully. So we turned to Redpill Linpro, who rose to the challenge by developing a specialist solution straight away.”

Environmentally friendly and secure

It took just two months to develop Bifrost. The tailor-made solution cost the county municipality less than NOK 250,000. The Ministry of Government Administration and Reform contributed financial support for the project.

“We were extremely surprised at how quickly the solution was developed. Our experiences from the pilot project were so good that we can now only see the possibilities, instead of the restrictions which we saw previously.”

The concept will now be rolled out to all schools on the network. With Bifrost, printouts are sent to a central printer queue instead of being directed to a specific printer. The printout is then routed to a printer when the user swipes a magnetic card through a card reader on the printer in question. This avoids the issues of printouts going to the wrong printer, forgotten printouts and confidential assignments/exercises going astray when they are printed. If a printout is not collected within a set time period, it is deleted from the queue.

“The solution is incredibly practical, and offers a wealth of opportunities. We can set the number of printouts permitted per user, and we get better control over all the printers on the network.”

The printout management solution also supports paid printouts, activated at user level, allowing users to purchase a set number of printouts.

“The solution also limits the number of printouts, making it environmentally friendly. The individual school has a clearer overview and more control when it comes to purchasing. Paper can now be ordered according to requirements, instead of using guesswork as was previously the case. Not only does this cut purchasing costs, it also means that printers last longer.”

Extremely scalable

Once all 25 upper secondary schools had been connected, the decision was made to roll the solution out to the county municipality’s central administration. Here, security requirements are often higher and the amount of sensitive information is greater. This solution also allows case managers and administrative staff to avoid running to the printer every time they print out a document.

“This makes for a significant improvement in security, and sensitive and confidential documents aren’t left lying around on printer for all to see. What’s more, this is bound to improve internal efficiency and users get a tool which has been tailored to suit their everyday needs and wishes.”

Bifrost is compatible with all hardware and software, and users are not limited to using a single supplier. It works on all operating systems and requires no domain log-in. Redpill Linpro has GPL-licensed the solution, and the software does not require Active Directory support. The product was developed by integrating Open Source software such as Apache, CUPS, OpenLDAP, OpenWRT, Samba and Perl. There is no need to install the software on the user clients. This keeps costs to a minimum and does not place restrictions on the user.

“The solution is extremely scalable, and is easy to roll out. So the time taken to get it in place across the entire county is only dependent on our own internal capacity.”

Huge savings every year

Ideologically, Kaldhol and his colleagues may be devotees of Open Source software, but their positivity and convictions are based on rational arguments. They have saved – and are continuing to save – large sums of money each year by not tying themselves to suppliers. They also find the operation of their IT systems simpler using Open Source alternatives.

“We use a lot of Open Source software, both for financial reasons and because the technology is often better at dealing with the challenges we face. The public sector needs to be very cautious about tying itself to proprietary standards. We need to take a long-term approach and ensure compatibility both today and in the future. Here, Open Source software plays a leading role.

“The IT world is in a unique position. Being tied to software doesn’t have an equivalent in other fields. It’s actually pretty crazy when you come to think about it…”

Simpler operation with Open Source software

“We find Open Source software to be easier to administer than proprietary alternatives. We operate around 100 servers: 20 running Windows, 70 running Open Source software and 10 running other software. We tend to use four FTEs operating the Windows servers, compared to just two for the servers running Open Source software.

“Bearing in mind that the Open Source software servers also take care of the network operations, the figures speak for themselves.

“Roughly speaking, we expect Open Source software to save us up to NOK 2,000,000 a year in licensing costs.”

More about Bifrost

Bifrost acts as an add-on product for the CUPS printer server, providing additional functionality for cards, card readers, printout quotas and their administration. Bifrost also includes a user-oriented website which allows users to check their quotas, cancel print jobs and upload print jobs via the internet.

The design is Open Source, and can be expanded. For example, Bifrost is currently designed to authenticate users against LDAP, but can also be expanded to support AD and domain log-ins for organisations where this is required.

To find out more about the solution, visit redpill-linpro.no/bifrost