Branch Office Direct Printing

Overview

Microsoft introduced Branch Office Direct Printing (BODP) for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 desktops to support workstations printing directly to the destination printer or MFD, therefore bypassing the print server the queue was originally hosted on. The intention of this feature was to reduce the bandwidth consumption of print jobs being sent from branch offices to print servers in a main office.

Print Deploy

In version 19.1, we released Print Deploy which is a simple and fast method to deploy print queues. Here is the Print Deploy tour page and also the Print Deploy Help Center if you want to learn more about it.

PaperCut Direct Printing

PaperCut v16.0 introduces PaperCut Direct Printing, a solution which also has many of the same goals of Branch Office Direct Printing, but also includes many of the core services you come to expect from PaperCut, including the ability to track, control and audit usage of queues regardless of if they’re server based or direct, as well as Find Me Print, Secure Release of print jobs, charging to Shared Accounts and the like.

Customers considering a solution that allows for support of direct printing may like to consider PaperCut’s Direct Printing solution, especially if their goals are to also include the feature set of a cost recovery solution like PaperCut NG or MF.

A quick comparison

Feature	BODP	PaperCut Direct Printing
Supported OS’	Windows Server 2012, Windows 8 Desktops	All supported PaperCut versions (Vista and above, OSX 10.8 and above)
Supports printing direct from desktop to printer	Yes	Yes
Reduces load on WAN links	Yes	Yes
Supports the use of WSD ports	Yes	No
Retains audit/usage information on queues	No	Yes
Supports USB or locally connected printers	No	Yes
Allows for Printer Pooling / Load Balancing	No	Yes

---

Categories: Reference Articles, Print Queues

---

Keywords: Direct Printing, Branch Office Direct Printing, BODP, direct printing