Millions Streamline Printer Management with HP Universal Print Driver

More than 2 million copies of HP's Universal Print Driver have been downloaded from hp.com, allowing users and IT departments to realize time-saving and productivity benefits when managing printers

The HP Universal Print Driver for Windows, which works with virtually all networked HP LaserJet printing devices, enables IT staff to focus on more strategic enterprise issues and projects, reduce the number of calls to help desks and improve productivity for those who print.

The easy-to-use, self-updating driver provides both users and IT departments a single, intelligent "universal" print driver to manage. The driver automatically recognizes upgrades to HP devices, so IT professionals do not need to manually update drivers on each device on a network. For business travelers, the HP Universal Print Driver eliminates the need to locate and download drivers for remote company offices since they are already able to print to most HP LaserJet printers, regardless of location.

"Issues related to printer drivers are daily time-sinks for IT professionals, but the HP Universal Print Driver eliminates these headaches by simplifying printing and reducing IT and help desk calls," said Vince Ferraro, vice president of worldwide marketing, LaserJet Business, HP. "As the industry's only truly single universal print driver, the HP UPD allows customers to concentrate on their real business of printing valuable documents - not supporting and managing their printer fleets."

According to Scott Hunt, product line manager at Brigham Young University, "The HP UPD met many of the objectives that we sought out, allowing us to expand easily, providing our customers and consumers with greater flexibility and reducing our support costs."

HP has deployed the Universal Print Driver to its employees nearly worldwide. Results from the deployment include:

Two-week rollout to more than 100,000 HP employees;
A 20 percent reduction in help desk and printer-related support calls in the first three months;
HP was able to "retire" 225 redundant print servers costing approximately $2,900 per month per server - enabling a savings of $7.8 million per year;
Nineteen IT people gained back up to 45 percent of their time.

HP also found that changing default settings to duplex printing (double-sided printing) in the HP Universal Print Driver:

reduced the company's paper usage by 25 percent; and
is expected to save more than $6 million and reduce annual paper usage by more than 750 tons, when implemented globally as a standard.

The HP UPD is also beneficial to organizations deploying Windows Vista as it enables IT departments to virtually eliminate the need for testing, qualifying and distributing hundreds of different printer drivers when they migrate to Windows Vista.

"The existence of multiple printer drivers within an organization can bring a number of challenges for IT personnel, the help desk, the end-users, and the organization as a whole. The answer to these challenges would be an implementation of a driver aimed at becoming the 'platform' driver for an organization," said Jon Reardon, group director, Office Document Technology Services, InfoTrends. "HP appears to understand this need and the attention the company has paid to this area is encouraging."

InfoTrends published an industry white paper on the HP UPD, titled "One Driver to Rule Them All: The Universal Print Driver," which states that it should be clear that this driver pays off for organizations in a number of business-critical areas.

The HP Universal Print Driver was recently recognized by Industry Analysts, Inc., receiving the firm's first Technological Innovation Award. Industry Analysts is a marketing and management consulting firm specializing in research and training for the office automation industry - HP.