In this Article
For many industrial companies, external warehouses, partner sites, and distributed logistics centers are part of everyday operations. But what happens when these locations need to receive SAP print jobs such as transport orders, labels, and production documents but don’t have access to the corporate network? This is precisely where traditional printing infrastructures reach their limits.
Three Challenges When Printing Outside the Corporate Network
1. VPN Security Risk
To provide remote locations with print data, many companies rely on VPN tunnels or full connectivity to the corporate network. However, these solutions pose a potential threat to their own infrastructure. Every new network connection increases the attack surface and is simply no longer practical for maintenance reasons.
2. SAP Complexity
Many IT departments lack the capacity to make SAP-related changes for every new location. Therefore, they are looking for a solution that integrates seamlessly into the existing SAP environment without requiring adjustments to the SAP system.
3. Heterogeneous Printing Landscape
At remote locations, printing is not limited to SAP. Everyday Windows office print jobs, such as documents from Microsoft Word, Excel, or email, must also be sent to the same printers. Two separate printing paths for SAP and Windows would be neither efficient nor maintainable.
The Solution: Cloud-Based Output Management as SaaS
The PLOSSYS® Output Engine from SEAL Systems is an output management system based on a microservices architecture and specifically designed for cloud operation. In the SaaS version, the printing infrastructure is provided via the cloud and hosted in the European Union on AWS.
The architecture is deliberately kept lean:
- A relay server is located on the corporate network, which receives print jobs from the regular SAP print queue and transfers them to the SEAL Systems cloud system via IPPS.
- In the cloud, the print jobs are made available in so-called pickup queues.
- At the external locations, a seal-ipp-proxy runs, which regularly checks whether print jobs are present in its configured cloud queues. If so, the jobs are retrieved and transferred to the local spooler, which forwards them to the physical printers.
No direct printing from outside into the corporate network. No VPN. No SAP customizations. And: Even office printing from Microsoft Windows is output in the same way without additional customization.
Success Story: Jungheinrich AG
Jungheinrich requires a continuous supply of goods from external warehouses to ensure a smooth production process. These warehouses are operated by various partners at different locations and are not integrated into the Jungheinrich network. Nevertheless, transport orders and labels must be printed there using the same processes as at the central location.
In the past, VPN solutions were used to provide SAP print data to the external sites. Jungheinrich wanted to replace these, as they posed a potential risk to the infrastructure. At the same time, it was clear from the outset that no SAP-side adjustments should be made, as there were no resources available for this.
With the PLOSSYS® Output Engine as a SaaS solution, this exact requirement profile could be met. The SAP print jobs leave the SAP system fully formatted and are transferred to the PLOSSYS® cloud via a Windows print server. At the remote locations, the proxy services retrieve the jobs and forward them to the local printers.
Results
- Jungheinrich now has an improved and clearly defined process for connecting new warehouses and external locations.
- New external partners can be provided with print data quickly and with relatively little effort.
- The solution is extremely stable and rarely prone to failure.
- SaaS frees Jungheinrich from having to operate the cloud infrastructure and local components in the external warehouses.
- In addition to SAP print jobs, office printing from Microsoft Windows is also routed through the same channel without requiring additional configuration.
In SEAL Systems, we found a provider that precisely addressed the needs of our output process. Output via the SEAL Systems cloud is seamless and secure. It was important to us that the cloud-based operation of the Output Management Server be hosted within the European Union. SEAL Systems was able to guarantee this. Before the project with SEAL Systems, we had tried to make the print data available to external companies via VPN. For maintenance reasons, this was no longer a viable solution.
Printing without a VPN: Here’s how!
Organizations that need to integrate remote locations and partners into their printing processes face a choice: open up their network perimeter or decouple the printing workflow via the cloud. The PLOSSYS® Output Engine, offered as a SaaS solution, demonstrates that secure SAP printing is possible at any number of remote locations—without a VPN, without SAP customizations, and including office printing.
Read the full success story!