A 24-hour print outage is more than an inconvenience for most organizations

of IT teams expect moderate or major disruption

For years, Service Level Agreements( SLAs) in print have focused on a single metric: uptime. Server availability was seen as a proxy for reliability, resilience, and user experience. But as print stacks become cloud-connected and businesscritical, uptime alone is no longer enough.

Today’ s customers need more than working servers— they need uninterrupted printing, scanning, and updates. Availability must reflect outcomes, not just infrastructure: a platform may be operational, but if users can ' t print or route documents, that’ s unacceptable for critical services.

SAFEQ

say business workflows would stop

Cloud Service Availability in the last 12 months

Submitting print jobs

Last 30d: 99.98 % Last year: 99.98 %

Processing jobs Last 30d: 100 % Last year: 99.96 %

“ Modern SLAs should answer real questions: Are print jobs leaving devices? Are scans reaching destinations? Are updates deployed without downtime? Can issues be flagged before users notice? Without transparency, customers rely on assumptions— a poor foundation for reliability.”

Martin de Martini

CIO, Y Soft

Send job to printer

Last 30d: 99.99 % Last year: 99.96 %

Potential issue: only 99.74 % successful print jobs today

Releasing print job Last 30d 100 % Last year: 99.96 %

One sign of SLA maturity is public visibility, including real-time status and historical data, accessible without a login. Automated alerts for incidents and maintenance are equally vital; silence during an outage can be more damaging than the outage itself. Ultimately, the presence— or absence— of a public status page speaks volumes.

27 | STATE OF PRINTING