MyQ is a powerful print management solution that streamlines document workflows with secure, cloud-based printing and scanning accessible from anywhere. With personalized user experiences, mobile capabilities, and centralized device control, it helps organizations save time, boost efficiency, and keep sensitive data protected.
In this episode, we delve into the complexities of print management in modern workplaces. We discuss common frustrations with printers, such as hardware issues and security concerns, especially in large organizations. Mark Asbridge from MyQ explains how their company addresses these challenges by integrating print, scan, and document routing into secure workflows. He emphasizes the importance of managing distributed print environments and the benefits of MyQ’s solutions, which include reducing IT support tickets and enhancing security. The conversation also touches on future trends like AI and the shift towards cloud-based solutions, highlighting the need for scalable and secure print management systems.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- Printing becomes a major issue when organizations scale.
- MyQ was created to simplify secure print management.
- Print management covers printing, scanning, routing, and control.
- Secure print prevents confidential documents from sitting unattended.
- IT teams benefit from fewer printer-related support tickets.
- MyQ standardizes printer interfaces across multiple manufacturers.
- Centralized control helps manage users, permissions, and workflows.
- Existing infrastructure can often support MyQ with the right hardware.
- Modern security requires encryption throughout the print process.
- MyQ helps reduce wasted paper and unnecessary print volume.
- Companies can save significant IT time through print queue automation.
- The platform scales from one device to thousands.
- AI is most useful in scanning, classification, and document routing.
- Windows Protected Print may reshape how organizations print.
- MyQ focuses on making print management easy before adding AI.
Chapters
00:00 – The Printing Dilemma: Common Frustrations
01:48 – Introducing MyQ: A Solution to Printing Problems
04:45 – Understanding Print Management: The MyQ Approach
08:30 – Pain Points of Decentralized Printing
11:42 – Scaling Challenges in Print Management
14:33 – Bringing Workflows Under Control with MyQ
19:40 – Integrating MyQ with Existing Infrastructure
21:43 – Security and Privacy in Print Management
24:36 – Success Stories: Real-World Impact of MyQ
28:18 – Future Trends: The Evolution of Printing
33:32 – AI in Print Management: Current and Future Applications
37:24 – Industry Changes: A Call for Standardization
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:01.006)
Hello everyone and welcome to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton. Now let’s talk about printing. So most people don’t think much about printing until maybe their printer stops working or the printing process stops working. There are the hardware issues, of course, like print nozzles drying up. You have paper jams, you have those faulty ink cartridges. Those are very annoying, of course. And then there are the other issues with software and workplace dynamics. Maybe a document gets stuck in the queue.
There’s an internal confidential file that’s left sitting in a shared tray. Or IT just ends up dealing with constant support issues from just a bunch of different printers spread across different locations. Printers have had a bad reputation for a long time. I think a lot of us think of the memorable scenes in office space. I think that’s a classic example. And for a lot of people, that frustration just feels really relatable.
But for organizations managing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of devices across offices, remote sites, hybrid teams, printing is far from a minor issue. It can create really, you know, severe security headaches. It can increase costs and just become one of those ongoing frustrations that just eats away at an IT team. Today’s guest is Mark Asbridge, Head of Product Enablement at MyQ, a company focused on bringing more control to that environment by connecting print scan and document routing into smarter, more secure workflows. So we’ve got a lot to get into this space. We’re going to dig into what it really takes to manage a distributed print environment, how MyQ works with that infrastructure companies already have in place, and then why something as simple as a printer tray can turn into a real security concern. So again, we have a lot to get into.
So let’s just get right into it mark welcome to the podcast glad you could join us.
Mark (01:52.996)
Thanks for having me. I think it’s a great intro of all the pain points, all the problems that people face within the printing world. To be honest, I always have a bit of a laugh and joke and explain that I’ve never met an IT person that likes print and it’s always those pain points that people always come across as you’ve opened up.
Beau Hamilton (02:11.35)
Yeah, yeah, there’s there’s definitely a love hate relationship with printers out there. There’s there’s a plenty of printer memes poking fun at how often they don’t work. And then, you know, of course, office spaces just comes to mind. It’s a legendary scene where they take out their frustration on their printer. So let’s let’s start there. You know, what what was Mike you originally set out to solve with their management solution software? Like was the company’s mission from the beginning to address the kind of pain points that
Mark (02:26.779)
Absolutely.
Beau Hamilton (02:39.554)
you know, give rise to all these printer lore memes in the first place.
Mark (02:44.574)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, that was the thing that every software solution starts with a pain point. Everybody develops something from a problem that they’re seeing in the industry. And that’s what our founders had. They worked for a reseller in Czechia and they were seeing the problems that people were facing all the time with the print management solutions that were out at the time. Not only were they really expensive, they were overly complicated, they were time consuming to implement. And that was the kind of the ideas.
Both of the families all worked within the print industry and they kind of started thinking there must be a better way of doing this and that’s kind of what what started our founders of my queue working together to say right how can we make this better and it was by their collaboration and their working within the print industry that they kind of started developing the very early phases of my queue and I always like to explain that back in 2007 when our first
application was developed. Devices and printers those days didn’t have like the touchscreen terminals that we’re used to seeing today. It was a touchpad with a couple of numbers and that was it. So we developed an external reader that went on to those devices. But it’s really interesting that the philosophy, what they developed at very first phase, which was easy to implement, cost effective and secure, that philosophy hasn’t gone through the whole entire company.
to where we are today.
Beau Hamilton (04:14.914)
Gotcha. Yeah, those are some good, important pillars to focus on for sure. I know that, you know, obviously we have our consumers, the average end user has their personal experience working with printers. But for businesses and IT teams, I think the problems and headaches are just magnified, tenfold, as you have to imagine trying to manage printing across the modern hybrid distributed workplaces, among many other things.
I’m curious for someone who hasn’t used a Parade Management Platform before, how do you usually explain what MyQ does in simple terms that they can understand?
Mark (04:55.242)
No, absolutely. And there’s a couple of sort of pillars to look at it when you start talking about print management, because the first thing that people tend to talk about is the whole secure printing part. That’s really the foundations of where everything has started from. And it’s very simply that when you’re printing, you’re not just printing directly to a single device, you’re printing to a pool of devices. And when you log into that machine and click print, that’s when that print job is then released to that machine.
But that’s the real basic kind of functionalities. And a lot of people obviously have primary reasons for security, for them having this secure print environment. They can walk up to any device and they can get their print jobs perfect. But to be honest, today’s modern world, when everybody’s starting to digitize, everybody wants to scan to different cloud areas. People want to connect and natively print from cloud. That’s kind of where the applications that MyQ develops takes it to another level.
It’s not just about printing and just a secure print. It’s about how you’re actually interacting with today’s modern scanning processes. So not only can we do this secure print, this preview, we can also then start digitizing scanning documents into a cloud environment. So for me, I always sort of describe it as what’s print management? Well, print management is managing your entire print fleet from your security printing to your scanning.
to your day-to-day maintenance of those devices and then kind of everything connected to it.
Beau Hamilton (06:29.432)
Gotcha. OK, that’s a good explanation. it helps. Basically, makes me think of the software you’re trying to tackle all the help solve all the problems that one can imagine and one could also not imagine, like all the different use cases. There’s so many different use cases and dynamics that you have to navigate. And so having a solution that is built in and kind of has a proactive approach, I guess.
to handle them so that you avoid a lot of the problems in the future, I think is a smart choice. I feel like a lot of companies don’t really think about print management until maybe the problems start piling up in the first place. They might be just getting by with their current sort of patchwork approach that might work well enough for a while. as things start to get more complex, it breaks down.
Mark (07:23.402)
Yeah, that’s the thing you’re absolutely right. When you’ve only got one device, it’s nice and simple. And if you only got a handful of users, but it’s when you start multiplying those problems. And that’s really where the issues sort of start coming from. And equally, IT people these days, they don’t have the time. They’re trying to manage so many services within business. IT is such a critical part of every business. And we’re making their life so much simpler. So every development, every kind of new feature of functionality.
Beau Hamilton (07:28.908)
Yeah.
Mark (07:53.3)
We’ve always got those IT people in mind to say, how can we save them time? How can we make it easier for them? As well as we’re also thinking of our users, because obviously the users are the ones day to day, they’re using the applications, they’re going up to the device. And really we want it to be as streamlined for them as possible. But equally, sometimes when you talk about streamlining services and processes, it creates an administrative nightmare because IT didn’t have to manage it. But we try and always balance both of those processes out by
having the integrations, having the processes that people want, but then equally making sure that IT is well supported in the modern technology that they’re expecting to see.
Beau Hamilton (08:30.988)
Yeah, maybe you could talk about some of those problems that you’ve, you know, hear about and experience from, you know, not using a centralized print management platform. Like what typically do you hear are some of the pain points?
Mark (08:45.15)
Yeah, I mean, my favorite one to start off with, and everybody sees it in every office that you go to that doesn’t have a print management solution. You just see paper everywhere. It’s just an unbelievable amount of paper everywhere. And I mean, my previous years, I’ve been a hardware engineer. And I remember going out to customer sites before they put print management systems in. And you could pick up some really confidential data. And you see that all the time in every place. And I’ve had people print people’s paychecks on the wrong printer in the wrong office.
you have to start looking at and understanding that you just can’t do that in today’s work. So we’d start seeing the real pain points as just security of printing. Step one. Step two is then when you start talking about scanning, scan to email, scan to folder, scan to OneDrive, SharePoint, whatever the scanning requirements are, you always end up with a new starter and the new starter comes along and says, how do I use the photocopier? And then it’s a ticket to IT and then they have to put the address book for that particular person in.
Beau Hamilton (09:25.294)
Mm-hmm.
Mark (09:43.838)
or they have to set up that printer on that person’s PC. This whole manual processes just expand massively. And then you then start talking about OneDrive, SharePoint, and things like that. And copy is originally designed to integrate into that cloud environment and have that processes. So people are sat there looking at the copy as going, all I can do is scan to email. I want to do more. I want to scan this to a destination where it’s going to end.
So we want to make sure that they’re supported in all of these processes from making sure they don’t have print jobs laying around, that the security, the reporting, the making sure that it’s cost effective because again, we need to make sure that we’re not just printing documents by mistake. They don’t just sit on the copy and they get shredded and go in the bin at the end of the day. So for me, it’s all that part that we need to kind of look at and start with. Let’s start off with the basics, which is secure printing.
making sure that the print jobs aren’t just wasted on the device. And then it’s then all the extra value adds and then you can start introducing and adding to the system.
Beau Hamilton (10:52.194)
That makes sense. Yeah, I think of when I run into my own issues connecting to my home printer and it’s one device that I’m trying to connect to with maybe like my laptop, my phone, my Mac. And like if I accidentally print something that’s sensitive or my roommate, let’s say, sees or I have a guest over and they see, like that’s one thing, right? I don’t really have to worry too much about that because I know this person. But for a business that…
The scale is much different and the ramifications are much different, of course. What kind of print related challenges do you see arise as companies grow and add more devices? Maybe they add more locations. They scale up, right? So if they’re adding more users, all these things complicate the process of printing. What are the challenges associated with
Mark (11:42.73)
So really the biggest challenge that I see on that is ownership on IT. Because you start off with one machine with 10 users. That for an IT person is 10 users to manage. That’s OK. That’s fine. But when you start multiplying that by hundreds of devices, multiple locations, that’s where it becomes really a complete administrative nightmare for IT. Because not only do they have to set it up once at one location, but then people travel to do different office locations.
Today’s world, we’re so used to traveling to different offices, different parts of the world, and we just expect it to work. We walk into an office and I just want to print. Why should I have to be raising IT tickets and making phone calls to teams or trying to find a super user in that office location just to set up a printer? And this is where I see a lot of companies where they’re investing in the software solutions to make their lives simple.
And yes, we can talk about the sort of ROI on savings of print costs. I actually much rather talking about how much time and simple we’re going to make it for IT because they don’t have 20 or 30 IT tickets coming in to say, how do I set up a printer? How do I set up some scanning? The whole idea of it is that when it starts multiplying, the system manages itself. Like you get a new user, the system automatically synchronizes against that system. The user logs into their laptop, the print queues are automatically deployed to their device.
They log into the photocopier, their email address is populated, their OneDrive is connected. It just works. So yeah, fine, without the systems, you can do some of these processes. But as soon as you start multiplying it, it becomes a nightmare.
Beau Hamilton (13:26.166)
Yeah, I do want to turn our attention back to my queue and the the IT team side of things because like, yeah, like you’re saying, that’s that’s really where the focus is, because in a perfect world, like most people using printing, like they don’t have it just works like they shouldn’t have to think about, you know, running it into issues and and and then also just I was thinking to the the the snowball effect of just like freeing up your time like
Not having to deal with printing issues can free your time up to tackle so many more important issues and actual work that needs to be done.
Mark (14:05.866)
But if you look at it from the user’s point as well, I mean, that’s the thing is, that user frustration. mean, the times I’ve spoken to users when they just, I just want to print. Why is it so complicated? And then you implement a software solution like MyQ and they’re like, well, why didn’t we have this before? And you go, yes, absolutely. Because it’s frustrating. People just want to work and do their job. They’ve got more important things to do than worrying about getting a print job or a scan. And that’s…
Beau Hamilton (14:08.483)
Yeah.
Beau Hamilton (14:16.59)
Yeah.
Beau Hamilton (14:22.222)
Right.
Beau Hamilton (14:26.488)
Yeah.
Beau Hamilton (14:33.514)
And you don’t know what you don’t know. I mean, you don’t know if there’s a better solution out there until you’re presented with one and told about one. And I think that’s a good segue, I guess, to kind of focus back on MyQ in the sense of, know that one of the statements I hear from MyQ is that the platform helps bring these workflows and bring printers under control, right?
Talk about that some more. What does that mean? What does it actually look like in practice for say an IT team?
Mark (15:08.584)
Yeah, absolutely. So where every brand has their own interface. every manufacturer, have their UI on their screen where it’s unlocked. You can walk up to it and then you can do a photocopy and you can print to it. Everything’s unmanaged. It’s a free for all. If you look at it from that aspect. when you start implementing MyQ, you embed the application, our MyQ application on the device. So what that means is we’re in full control of that machine. We can control
who logs into that machine, what access they have when they do log into it, what they can print, what they can scan, where to, how, how much, quantities, every part of that entire process can be centrally managed through MyQ. And it’s such a key aspect of that. So when they walk in, although I’m gonna sidetrack, so I’m gonna pause because I kind of half forgot your question as I was going through the answer. So can you ask the question again?
Beau Hamilton (16:03.278)
It’s all good. Yeah. What does, so what does that, the process of bringing, you know, printers and these workflows under control, what does that like look like in practice for an IT team?
Mark (16:21.066)
So the first thing that we need to look at is how the devices are without a solution. And that’s really the pain point to start off with, where they’re unmanaged, unlocked. And every manufacturer has their own interface. Whether or not it’s unlocked or locked, it has their own user interface, which becomes a problem when you’ve got multiple brands, multiple manufacturers, multiple interfaces. There’s a lot of education processes to be done there. Whereas Mikey then standardizes that. You install our application on the device, and then from there,
you’ll be able to have all the controls through MyQ. So whether or not that’s the authentication, whether or you’re logging in with pins, you’re using the QR codes, ID badge, one way or another, you’re authenticating with that device. Because you’re then authenticating and saying, it’s me, the system then knows what your approved destinations are, what you’re allowed to do, what’s your policies, what you can do on that machine. Are you allowed to photocopy? Are you allowed to print? Can you scan here? Are you allowed to scan there?
Basically, when you start implementing a software solution like ours, it gives the IT complete control to define who can do what. Now it can sound like this whole controlling process through the system. Although, yes, it is controlling, but what it means is it gives the users what they actually need. Because what’s the point having half a dozen different scanning actions and areas that they can do that they’re never going to use? And I always use a great example of like,
Beau Hamilton (17:48.174)
Mm-hmm.
Mark (17:50.228)
for example, scanning in invoices or scanning in delivery notes. They’re generally only required by certain departments or certain team members. So why give everybody in the company access to it? It’s making sure that they have the right actions at the right locations to do that scanning and to do those processes for them. They don’t need to overly complicate things. So again, we talk about time saving and exercises, not only for IT, but that’s the benefits for those users. Also, when we then start talking about
printing. It means users don’t have to think about what printer they want to print to. They go file print and then wherever they walk on any machine that’s connected to their system they will then just log in authenticate themselves and they’ll then get their print jobs for them.
Beau Hamilton (18:35.948)
Yeah, I think if you’re it’s absolutely worth like seeding a little bit of control if it means that the printing process is just going to work more consistently. Right. And then once you start kind of like educating, I guess, the end user, if they’re curious about, you know, the authorization or whatnot of just having to manage all the different drivers, all the different sort of fragmented printers and, you know, machines out there and work with different devices. Like it’s a complicated process. You obviously need to have a little bit of, you know, control over
Mark (18:43.37)
What’s that?
Beau Hamilton (19:04.526)
that process of managing everything from like a centralized location, it sounds like. And I want to like, it brings up the question of like, so like, let’s let’s say a company wants to implement my queue, but they already have a bunch of existing infrastructure. What what does that process look like? You know, like, maybe, you know, if you want to implement my queue, do you have to go out and buy, you know, a bunch of new gear or
Does it just fit into a lot of these environments without requiring companies to replace anything?
Mark (19:40.106)
It’s a mixture of our answer on that one. Obviously, to implement a software solution, we need to make sure that we got compatible hardware, whether or not we’re looking at an on-premise solution, a cloud solution, and what brands of devices are, whether or not they’re modern devices supporting modern authentication, encryption, and bits and pieces. So there’s quite a few variances of answers on that. However, Mikey does support multiple manufacturers.
Beau Hamilton (20:00.909)
you
Mark (20:08.266)
We don’t just support one brand. So for most companies, it’s not an issue whatsoever because we can implement MoeQ on all these different devices and have this consistent feel and consistent look across all of them. But it’s one of those discovery questions that we’ll always need to start off and talk to our partners, understand what devices they’ve got and make sure that they are compatible with modern security because a lot’s changed in the last five years. When we start talking about
encryption levels and security levels. The devices need to be able to support that because, Mikey, it’s all about security first. So we want to make sure that whatever processes we’re implementing, that we’re making sure we’ve got that security behind it. So in the ideal world, yes, you don’t have to replace the hardware. But if you come with a bit of hardware that’s like 10 years old, then of course that then can become quite an issue. If you look at it the same as like Microsoft with their releases of like Windows 11 or the next version.
they’re always having to increase their security levels and they’re adding these new requirements in. So again, just a bit of discovery questions to our market employees.
Beau Hamilton (21:16.366)
Yeah, no, that’s reassuring to know. the security standpoint makes sense. I feel like when you were talking about just how MyQ works and kind of authorization and control it has, it obviously kind of brings up that question of security and privacy and how much control it has over maybe a user’s device. Does the software control
just everything pertaining to the printing process, does it control the entire computer? Like how does the privacy security standpoint work from that angle?
Mark (21:53.97)
Yeah, so I mean, what we would like to call an end-to-end encryption. So we’re basically controlling that process from the user’s laptop. So we have a thing called a desktop client. So the desktop client tool is optional, but it’s highly recommended to use it because it gives you so many more flexibility and options. But the idea is the desktop client tool gets installed on the user’s computer. It will then automatically install the correct print queue for that person at that right location. So wherever they are within the business, whatever their job role is.
they will then get the right print key. Then when they click print, it’s encrypted. This is encrypted from the point that it’s printed all the way through its holding processes, all the way until the user then logs into that device and it’s then printed. So we’re not necessarily controlling the users like Windows PC or Mac or whatever device that they’re utilizing, but we’re authenticating that user at that point of print to make sure that they are the only ones that accesses their print job.
So it’s completely secure and it’s been encrypted during the whole entire process. So a couple of different parts of that.
Beau Hamilton (23:01.442)
Yeah, that’s a good distinction. mean, it’s just pertaining to, you know, the sounds like the printing process as soon as you know, a file print, essentially. That’s the most important part. that makes sense. mean, you don’t want you want to you have to think about this from a business standpoint, you can’t, you know, be believing confidential internal, you know, documents unsecured and maybe you know, being left on the printer tray and all that stuff you can’t you got to you got to think about making sure everything is
sick here and otherwise you’re just going to open the door to all sorts of other issues,
Mark (23:37.108)
Yeah, absolutely. But it’s also, we also need to understand the fact that when we’re printing into a print management solution like, like MyQ, it’s where that data sits. So where does that data go? And that’s the part, that’s the next part. yes, great. I’ve implemented a print management solution, but is my data encrypted at rest? Is it transferred encrypted? Because you kind of move one problem into another problem. And that’s the part that we then resolve. So not only be doing this end-to-end encryption,
We’re making sure that only the right users have the right print jobs at the right location.
Beau Hamilton (24:08.494)
Gotcha, okay. Now, I’d love to hear what the adoption process looks like in practice. It’s obviously neat to hear about the features, hear about some of the problems avoided, obviously the importance placed on security and privacy and how encryption fits in and making sure everything is transferred securely from one device to another, from the cloud over to a local server or printer. But I wanna hear about…
you know, some of the maybe the tangible use cases and success stories, I suppose, of maybe like the time saved from a lack of, you know, printer headaches or the fewer support issues from an IT team or maybe some cost savings from business leaders. I’m just curious, and not to put you too much on the spot, but can you share an example of how a company maybe used MyQ to streamline its print environment?
Mark (25:02.218)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, we kind of in the industry, we always say that when you start implementing a print management solution, just on your print volumes, on average, you’ll save about 30%. Because you start showing the users what you’re printing. And equally, because it doesn’t just print straight away, the amount of people that forget all of a sudden, oh, I forgot to change something after they hit the print button. So to start off with, we always generally recommend about 30 % of savings on your print volume is
step one. So there’s a massive benefit to that basis straight away. When we then start talking to IT about support ticket sites, they generally again see 30, 40 plus percent production in tickets just on a basic follow me print solution when we start implementing MyQ. But then you can take that even further. if you have a, again, it depends on your environment, but if you have a lot of direct print queues, like a mixed environment.
where they’re having to manage hundreds of print queues because of different office locations and things. With some of our new updates that we’ve released, that’s going to save you about 80 % of your IT tickets just on printing, print queue deployment. So there’s so many areas that it can build out on. It’s huge amounts of time savings just for your IT and your onboarding of new users.
Beau Hamilton (26:25.528)
And then have you successfully rolled out the platform with an organization of, or I guess my question is, what’s maybe like, what’s one of the biggest rollouts you’ve heard or had an organization incorporate with MyQ?
Mark (26:42.964)
Yeah. So we do tens of thousands of devices on systems. It’s always quite an interesting one because it’s like people say to me, well, what’s the sort of size customer is ideal for print management? And my immediate answer is always one, just one. One machine and you need print management just because of the way that it integrates into the system. In some offices these days, you might have a thousand users to one device. So.
Beau Hamilton (26:48.937)
wow.
Beau Hamilton (26:57.655)
Yeah.
Mark (27:11.216)
If they’re like a modern digital first, they don’t need much printing. They can have a thousand users to one printer. But then you get into the realms of having tens of thousands of devices globally. So MyQ is designed to be incredibly scalable from one device all the way up to tens of thousands of devices. So we really do have that breadth of a software solution. But it’s all about how the system scales. It’s not here’s a design, here’s an architecture. That’s what it does.
Beau Hamilton (27:40.877)
Mm-hmm.
Mark (27:41.012)
the whole system was designed to be scalable. Now obviously there’s more resources that are needed. We need to make sure that we do the scoping out correctly to make sure it’s the right solution for the customer. But that’s it. It’s designed to scale.
Beau Hamilton (27:54.774)
Yeah, that’s an important pillar because companies are always either growing or shrinking, it seems like. And so you’re always adding devices or taking devices away. But I can’t imagine what the Patchwork solution was like for an organization that has 10,000 devices beforehand. I can’t imagine life without one of these printer management softwares.
Mark (28:18.026)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I always sort of laugh with IT, it’s this dark heart of scripting. And it’s like if one person leaves, like the whole system could just implode. And it’s just like, right, let’s remove those horrible dark heart processes and let’s put in a system that’s centrally managed. It’s going to do it all for you. That isn’t just only one person understands how the system works. And for me, that’s really quite a key point because staff change, people change, processes change. You need something that can scale and manage.
Beau Hamilton (28:22.06)
Yeah.
Mark (28:47.848)
manage those processes is for you. And that’s exactly what Mikey does.
Beau Hamilton (28:52.366)
The dark art of scripting, love it. I can imagine, yeah. Well, thanks for painting the picture there with some of the kind real world examples and how you’re able to scale. It does make me question where things are going. Obviously, we have the hybrid workflows and the cloud has been well massive. It’s been…
Mark (28:55.154)
Yes, I’ve seen enough dark art scripts over my years.
Beau Hamilton (29:20.686)
know, continues to get more more adopted. But I’m curious, like what emerging trend do you believe will have the biggest impact on your industry in the coming years? I mean, it’s hard to say like, you know, what things will look like in five years from now. But, you know, what are you looking forward to?
Mark (29:37.236)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s always a difficult one because there’s so many trends and patterns and changes. And obviously so many people will be sat here and talk about the buzzwords of AI and everybody’s talking about AI. And I still think AI trends are really important. And I always say put AI where AI is required. I’ve spoken many a times on having AI in print management solutions. I’ve always turned around and said, just make the software solution good in the first place where you don’t need to have some AI thing that does it for you.
Beau Hamilton (29:47.65)
Yep.
Mark (30:06.932)
So I still think AI within scanning and digitization is really key because it saves so much time and classifications, naming files, routing files, processing. I think that’s a fantastic phase. But for me, I always sort of say, what’s the continuation trends? What’s going to be going on? And obviously more more people are moving to the cloud. More people are digitizing. More people are talking about security and compliance and making sure documents are encrypted and processed.
All the times I’m seeing this, these higher standards required all of the time. So for my queue, we’re always having to keep on top of these processes on these new legislations that coming out all of the time, as well as all these new encryption methods to make sure that the products are making sure that they’re developing for that future. And one thing I think in the next, well, really the next 12 months to 24 months, the biggest change that I’m going to be starting to see is something from Microsoft called Windows protected print.
because that’s completely changing the whole way that people are going to be printing because removing legacy drivers, there just won’t be any drivers there anymore at all. It’s going to be completely gone. So I think for me, the biggest change I’m going to see in the next sort of 12 to 24 months is basically the way that everybody prints today is going to be gone. So we’re now starting to see people move into things called printer support apps and utilizing IPPS.
So that’s a particular printing protocol that will be the modern supported method by Microsoft. And Mikey, we currently support that method. We’re in the process of really enhancing it to make sure that it supports even more features and more functionalities for the future. Because again, things are changing. The print world, as much as people don’t think about print, so much changing with it all of the time.
Beau Hamilton (32:00.654)
I know I had no idea about Windows protected print, but that sounds fascinating. anything that I feel like a fundamental change, maybe kind of sounds like getting away from kind of the drivers supportive things, or is that how it works?
Mark (32:14.122)
Yeah, yeah, that’s correct. Yeah, getting rid of all the drivers so there’s no you can’t deploy or install the driver. There’s no drivers coming via Microsoft Windows updates. Drivers are gone and they are. I mean, it’s the same. I I’ve been in this industry long enough and drivers just like the core functionality of how you print. But from Microsoft and it’s one of their areas that they see quite a lot of security vulnerabilities in drivers because it allows you to install anything so.
Beau Hamilton (32:24.3)
Hmm. A thing of the past.
Beau Hamilton (32:34.072)
Yeah.
Mark (32:43.166)
quite understandably from Microsoft because thereafter enhancing their security on their platform and they see printing drivers is quite a big vulnerability. So I understand the process, but it’s gonna shake up the print industry quite a lot at this moment in time. And I think there’s a lot of nervous people out there, frankly trying to work out how are they gonna support it in the future. But for us, not a problem at all.
Beau Hamilton (33:07.426)
Well, it’s good you’re thinking about it. And then I wanted to ask too about the AI particular features. mean, obviously it’s something you want to keep in mind. know, it’s already making a splash in the printing world. have you guys started incorporating AI into your platform or how are you approaching the pipeline of features in regards to AI with MyQ?
Mark (33:32.148)
Yeah, absolutely. So I always like talking in two different ways, like AI in product and AI in our platforms. And what I mean by platforms and products, platforms is looking at how we do our documentation. How do our partners interact with Mikey? And we’ve invested a lot of time into that. So we’ve got like AI chatbots built into our online documentation. So users aren’t having to scroll through manuals and find the documentation.
Beau Hamilton (33:37.442)
Mm-hmm.
Mark (34:02.036)
They can then use our AI bots linked in directly to all of our documentation and start asking questions. That’s making it a really big time savings for them because they find the information immediately. They’re not having to try and scroll through lots of documents. We’ve also recently implemented an AI bot into our community portal. And our community portal is where people would raise any tickets. They would ask for any support, whether that’s pre-sales, post-sales.
If there’s any particular technical articles that they’re after seeing that’s in the community portal, all of these kind of bits and pieces, we’re leveraging our AI bots into that to make our partners lives much easier and much more efficient to find the information that they require. Because there’s nothing worse than sat on site trying to do an installation and having a problem that you don’t quite understand how to implement. With this, you can just quickly ask the chat bot a question and it then creates, it gives you the answers, gives you the feedback. Or if it’s something a little bit more technical.
it will then allow you to create a support ticket directly within that bot so you can do it really, really efficiently. You can upload some support files, off it goes and it creates that for you. So that’s kind of what we do for our partners. And then when we start looking at the actual products, at this moment in time, we haven’t integrated AI into the products. And it is something that is on our roadmap to this classification for this sort of different set of options of how we’re to do with those documents.
and there’s something that’s going to come out sort of in the future. We sort of announced it last year in one of our big events of what we’re looking at doing. But for me, really my core fundamentals, as I said it before, just make a print management solution that’s easy to use in the first place. You don’t need to have AI. Our systems are designed to be set up and running within 15, 20 minutes. If I need to build out a server and set it all up, it does not take time at all. It’s all designed to be automated and instant.
Beau Hamilton (35:45.475)
Right.
Mark (35:59.124)
Why do you need to leverage AI at that particular point? But again, there are services, digitalization, capturing, classifications. Yeah, it really makes a lot of sense and that’s something that will come in the future.
Beau Hamilton (36:09.154)
Yeah, and it’s exciting to see that you guys are going to eventually incorporate this where it makes sense. mean, that’s the thing is if you don’t, you got to roll it out carefully. You don’t want to kind of alienate users. if there’s a real utility there, then obviously you want to incorporate it. But if not, then maybe take more of a kind of careful approach and focus in on the knowledge-based AI applications like you’re mentioning with the chat bot, where it’s like,
If I, lot of the issues of printing is just like, you don’t know what’s going on, what’s wrong. So if you have maybe a chat bot AI based knowledge, knowledge base to help answer some of those questions and troubleshoot, I mean, that’s, that offers some real value there without necessarily being tied in directly to the product. So I think, I think that that approach makes sense to me. And yeah, I want to, you know, obviously talked about where the industry is headed is, is really fascinating.
It also makes you kind of think about, you know, what still needs to change right in the here and now, you know, as someone with a front row seat to this space, I want to ask you, you know, if you could change one thing about how your industry operates today, what would that that one thing be and why?
Mark (37:24.042)
It’s a difficult question. I’m going to have to… No, absolutely. mean, it’s a hard one to kind of directly answer. So what would I change now? Because the reason why it’s a difficult one to answer is because actually when you start talking about print in different parts of the world, everybody’s got this own ideas of how it should work. And it’s really interesting when we start developing new features and functionalities because…
Beau Hamilton (37:27.938)
Could be a couple of things too.
Mark (37:54.302)
you get to a point where you go, I think we should do it like this. And then we start talking to our partners globally. And then you end up having this complete mixture of answers of everybody’s opinion and how they think it should work. And we end up having this massive challenge. And obviously this is where our developers skills come into place because we always have this option of for every feature, every functionality that you enable, you should be able to disable it because everybody wants a complete change. So I think for me,
If I could change one thing that makes my life and our developers’ life easy, it’s just to have everybody globally to agree on one process. And it would just be such a time-saving exercise. Yeah, no, absolutely. But it’s where it becomes a challenge for us. And that’s where we leverage our partners. And we communicate a lot with our partners to really understand what’s their pain points, what are the issues that they’re facing. And then we then talk globally to a lot of people to then understand that they collate that all together.
Beau Hamilton (38:29.07)
Yeah, good luck with that.
Beau Hamilton (38:46.67)
Mm-hmm.
Mark (38:50.76)
so that we can then actually develop those processes forward. So yeah, it’s quite an interesting problem to be having.
Beau Hamilton (38:59.276)
Yeah, and the solutions like, know, with so many industries and the problems that are there, it’s like you gotta have everyone on the same page, or at least most of the main, you know, players on the same page. It’s like, you know, when Apple rolls out a big change, they’ll send out a, you know, have a ripple effect with where things are going. I’m just thinking of like, when they had the USB-C iPhone, it’s like, that was kind of a…
little bit ahead of its time, it was kind of a bold choice or when they got rid of the SIM card ejection tool or SIM card tray, it was a little bit, you know, kind of shocked the industry. But you know, that’s where things all move towards eventually.
Mark (39:40.49)
exactly. mean, to be honest, the whole Windows Projective Print we just talked about, that’s Microsoft’s equivalent of changing it from a Lightning port to a USB-C port. It’s just completely changing the way that people do things and that whole process. So yeah, lot of change.
Beau Hamilton (39:50.594)
interesting.
Beau Hamilton (39:55.534)
Well, we’ll have to have you back one of these days and talk about the Windows protected print and kind of where things are going just since the last time we spoke. things are obviously, I imagine things are moving pretty quickly. seems like anything software related right now is just moving very, very quickly. So it’ll be exciting to see how things are changed in the printing world. But I want to give you a chance to.
Tell listeners where they can go to learn more about MyQ and maybe get in touch with your team and learn.
Mark (40:26.762)
Yeah, absolutely. So if anybody goes onto a website and they can go to myq-solution.com, on there you’ll find a whole range of information that talks about our products, our services, what we can solve in there. We’ve also got a lot of our case studies. We’ve got blogs and articles. So if you really want to kind of start finding out more information, there’s a whole lot of information there. Also on there is a contact us page. So you can fill in a form whether not you’d to join us as a partner.
There’s lots of ways you can get into contact through our website and then one of our regional sales team will be able to kind of get in contact with you and really see how we can help you.
Beau Hamilton (41:05.198)
Perfect. MyQ-Solution.com. Mark, thank you so much for everything. I really appreciate all these, the insights in this conversation and genuinely would love to have you back one of these days to talk updates.
Mark (41:18.376)
Yep, no absolutely no problems. So just on the website, just to confirm myq-solution.com.
Beau Hamilton (41:25.132)
MyQ-solution.com. Perfect. And there’ll be a link down below in the description as well. For listeners, you can go click on the link and learn more. Thank you all for listening to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, Bo Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one. Thanks again, Mark.
Mark (41:46.058)
Thanks for having me.