Coffee Break Recap: TSC Printronix Auto ID and SOTI Discuss the Future of Innovation in Mobility Management | TSC Blog
This year TSC Printronix Auto ID has been working in partnership with SOTI, a world leader in mobile and IoT device management, to provide Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions to customers. TSC Printronix Auto ID has updated much of its printer firmware to be compatible with SOTI Connect, an innovative IoT management solution. Customers now have greater visibility and control across the entire line of Printronix Auto ID desktop and industrial printers, as well as a select group of TSC desktop and industrial thermal barcode label printers. An advanced mobile printer will join the line-up early next year.
In the latest Coffee Break episode, David Lundeen, Vice President of Marketing at TSC Printronix Auto ID, was joined by Joe Gordon, Vice President of Product Innovation at SOTI, to discuss the future of innovation in Mobility Management. Through this partnership, TSC Printronix Auto ID and SOTI have been able to better understand their shared customers’ challenges and work together to create innovative solutions that meet these needs. The pair work together to understand and solve business-critical challenges like the diversity of devices in your IoT network, servicing and updating of devices in distant locations from your IT control, and much more.
What Makes a Company an Innovative Powerhouse?
One of the things that TSC Printronix Auto ID and SOTI share is a dedication to listening to their partners and customers to fully understand the business challenges they face. This practice guides these companies to continuously create new solutions that effectively and efficiently solve a business need. By focusing on each customer’s unique pain points, they are able to create something that works to solve the problem the customer-facing.
Collaboration is another key part of the organizational culture that SOTI credits for its innovative edge. Instead of working in independent silos, SOTI finds that leveraging a team of very focused, dedicated, and committed professionals that work together to come up with creative ideas has been crucial for the growth and product of their team. Working in an open and honest format, employees are free to share ideas and positive critiques with each other. This collaborative and honest structure is another thing SOTI and TSC Printronix Auto ID have found in common that has made this partnership especially rewarding to both parties.
“We’ve really enjoyed the collaboration with the TSC Printronix Auto ID product and development teams,” states Joe Gordon, Vice President of Product Innovation at SOTI. “It helps us as a group to understand the needs of our shared customers.”
Product Innovations in Action
TSC Printronix Auto ID and SOTI are dedicated to finding the best solutions for their customers. This drive has led both companies to work on addressing specific areas of difficulty for the customer. Gordon shared two of the most pressing product innovations SOTI is currently working on.
In many situations involving IoT devices and remote printers, there is traditionally no IT management or skilled IT personnel on-site with these devices to service or update them. These devices are typically found in retail or warehouse environments where the employees and managers are either inexperienced or simply not trained on the technology. In the past, an IT professional has been responsible for going from location to location with a USB stick that holds any necessary firmware updates, certificates, and configuration files for the network of devices. Gordon refers to this person as “the guy with the stick.” It’s a very manual process of solving the problems, and SOTI has been working on a solution that will make this an automated and simplified process. The solution would be able to control a range of production boosting tasks like automatic enrollment of devices, automatic firmware updates, changing of configurations, and much more.
Another innovation that SOTI is currently putting a lot of focus towards is centered around trying to locate lost remote devices. When operating on remote devices, it can be difficult to keep record of the physical location of each device. For example, one store or distribution center might be in need of a printer, so they borrow one from a neighboring store and forget to return it. The innovative technology provided within the SOTI platform is working towards being able to maintain better visibility and tracking of remote devices as they move within a company.
The Future of Enterprise Mobility Management
Gordon, focused on the IT side of the Enterprise Mobility Management industry, shared that the biggest innovation he sees a need for right now is how to manage a continuously diverse environment in the IoT space. With an increased number of devices being deployed remotely, customers are experiencing increased difficulty managing their network of devices. SOTI is on a mission to be able to offer these customers a single point of management and a common interface where they can manage a range of different kinds of devices with different internal software all built from different manufacturers. With this IoT management software, customers no longer have to work individually with each manufacturer, and a wide variety of devices won’t overburden their IoT networks. They can simply go into their remote device management touchpoint and completely manage their entire IoT world.
Mobility Management Moving Forward in the Printer Space
Building printers for enterprise applications is an important part of TSC Printronix Auto ID’s mission and product portfolio. More and more, customers are looking for around-the-clock visibility of the devices on their network. This is something TSC Printronix Auto ID has been working very hard on internally and with partners like SOTI to provide. In the past, the AIDC industry relied on the same manual process of setting up and updating printers one at a time. TSC Printronix Auto ID has created software capabilities that make updating firmware on printers an easy and seamless process. The next step in delivering the most cutting-edge innovations is setting up Enterprise Mobility Management across all TSC Printronix Auto ID thermal barcode label printing devices.
“We are constantly looking to improve communications between our printers and our customers’ host networks, and SOTI Connect is a natural fit to accomplish this mission,” states David Lundeen, Vice President of Marketing at TSC Printronix Auto ID.
How to Manage Mass Data in an Expanding IoT Environment
As discussed in our last Coffee Break episode, SOTI Connect is not a standalone solution. It is part of an overall solution called the SOTI ONE Platform. This platform makes mobile and IoT business operations simpler, smarter, and more reliable. SOTI Connect has the capability to manage multiple devices and collect real-time information from them. Another helpful part of the SOTI ONE Platform is the ability to manage large amounts of data with the SOTI Insight tool. This tool has the power to take large amounts of data that SOTI Connect retrieves and use that data to drive business intelligent solutions. It delivers analytics back to customers to gain actionable insights into the performance of their mobile operations. There can be a lot of data coming in, and with the power of SOTI on their TSC Printronix Auto ID printer, users can turn that data into key action items and improve their overall business performance.
Securing Your Network of Devices
In the IoT industry, device security is critical. Connected devices within a corporate network are sometimes protected behind a firewall, but a lot of these devices may still be left vulnerable out at various locations. Without a secure and connected communications security system in place, these devices have traditionally been the source of security breaches. It is critical to safely secure these IoT devices. A key feature of SOTI Connect is the ability to provide encryption of these devices. The solution has the power to force devices to be encrypted. SOTI Connect can update the security certificates on these devices. The certificates are updated not just on the device itself, but in its communication to other devices on the network for processes like Wi-Fi security and much more. The connected IoT environment provided through this solution makes the updating and security of the network much easier to manage. Customers can be at peace knowing that their remote devices are no longer at risk of being compromised or being forgotten in the field.
Security of customers’ data is also safeguarded on TSC Printronix Auto ID devices that utilize the SOTI platform. Once the data is encrypted into SOTI’s system, all the protocols are in place to ensure that customers’ data is secure either with their on-premise installations of SOTI Connect or in a cloud installation of the Mobility Management solution.
How Can SOTI Continue to Innovate for the Thermal Printing Industry?
Since partnering with TSC Printronix Auto ID, SOTI has been able to take an in-depth look into the thermal printing industry and how the two innovative companies can work together to improve the lives of those they serve. The manual process of sending IT professionals out to individually service devices is still a problem within thermal printer management. Remote devices in warehouses or retail stores, don’t have IT resources out in these locations. IT is centralized in most companies, and in most cases, stores and warehouses are often left on their own or an IT member must travel out to the location to help. With this partnership, TSC Printronix Auto ID hopes to develop further automated software functionality to manage these problems.
“Having a universally recognized Enterprise Mobility Management partner is especially important to our continued success,” states Lundeen. “We have an exciting mobile printer announcement coming up, and SOTI Connect management capabilities are a cornerstone of those products.”
Enterprise Mobility Management is critical for the thermal printer industry. TSC Printronix Auto ID is currently working with SOTI to bring these solutions to customers in both Europe and North America, and plan to expand its joint capabilities to more customers around the world.
To learn more about TSC Printronix Auto ID printers powered by SOTI Connect, click here or contact your local sales representative.