How printing requirements are changing
With the advent of local area networks (LANs) and new information technologies, printing requirements are changing. For example:
- Applications need to print on LAN printers and host printers
- Businesses that print statements, such as banking statements, invoices, and bills of materials, need to print both on LAN-attached printers and on higher-volume, host-attached printers. Traditionally, VTAM® applications, such as Customer Information Control System (CICS®) and Information Management System (IMS™), have printed such business statements on coaxially attached Systems Network Architecture (SNA) printers. Now, these VTAM applications need to print on LAN-attached printers or on high-volume host printers.
- Workstation users want to print on host printers
- Workstation users want to print documents, such as memos, email, web documents, and manuals on LAN-attached PCL and PostScript printers. They also want to print on higher-speed, host-attached printers.
- Users want easy-to-use software
- Users want easy-to-use graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to handle the complex tasks of printing and managing printers.
- Applications need to print and run on the same system
- Many line-of-business applications, such as payroll, accounting, and inventory-control applications, need to print on the same system where the data is located. Whether these applications are z/OS batch applications or z/OS UNIX System Services applications, they need to print on host-attached printers.
- Companies require more print servers
- Companies with a combination of stand-alone and host-connected LANs that use various network operating systems and protocols need more print server capacity to meet their distributed printing needs. Adding more print servers increases printing costs.
These requirements introduce new issues:
- How to handle the wide range of printers and formatting options available in an environment and let users of traditional terminals and distributed workstations share these printers.
- How to print from host-based applications that are ported to z/OS UNIX System Services without reengineering their printing functions.
- How to reduce costs by reducing the number of print servers.