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Complexity of endpoints. With multiple printers, multi-site locations, mixed vendor fleets, guest printing, mobility of end users and BYOD to consider, print remains one of the more complex pieces of infrastructure to migrate. Security and compliance inertia. Because print is often out of sight, it doesn’t always get the same security scrutiny as other workloads, even though it should. Despite handling sensitive documents daily, print infrastructure can linger on legacy protocols, outdated drivers and unmanaged devices. This leaves a quiet but significant gap in an organisation’s broader security posture. What it means for security and efficiency In the old days of physical print servers and on-premise domains, there was an inherent trust built into the system. Laptops, printers, everything sat on the local network. In today’s cloud-based world, your server is no longer the point of identity on the network – it’s a platform like Microsoft Entra ID. And if your cloud migration isn’t handled properly, suddenly your users will be getting all sorts of prompts when they go to print, such as requests for admin rights when installing print drivers. It can unnerve a lot of inexperienced users. Leaving print behind comes with other concerns, too: Security risks. If a customer's print environment still relies on traditional print servers or unmanaged print drivers, it basically leaves a part of the infrastructure outside the discipline and visibility applied mainly to the cloud infrastructure. In a world where organisations are massively concerned about governance, compliance and identity-based access in the cloud, print can quickly become a weak link. Operational inefficiencies . From an IT ops perspective, maintaining on-prem print servers means manual setups, manual driver deployments, and site- by-site variability, plus a huge ongoing
maintenance burden. In an era when IT teams are being asked to streamline, reduce manual intervention and shift to cloud-managed everything, print being stuck in the server-farm world is a massive drag on resources. Cloud strategy misalignment. If the rest of a customer’s stack is cloud-first or even cloud-native, and print remains anchored on-prem, they may not fully reap the agility, scalability and cost- benefit advantages of a consistent cloud- managed environment.
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Despite handling sensitive documents daily, print infrastructure can linger on legacy protocols, outdated drivers and unmanaged device fleets. This leaves a quiet but significant gap in your organisation’s broader security posture.
A better alternative This is where the next gen of print
management solutions come into play. The goal should be to treat print like any other cloud-managed service, abstract away the on-prem burden, reduce manual overhead, and deliver print in a way that aligns with the organisation’s cloud-first strategy. Print as a service The ability to set up print queues on users’ computers using the cloud is a relatively new concept. If I’m honest, it’s probably the technology that will have the biggest impact on workplaces shifting their print management to the cloud; certainly it’s one of the biggest benefits. A Print Queue Deployment feature enables users to deploy, manage and retire print queues across sites from a central interface, apply drivers and set smart assignment policies, and align print with cloud-first goals. In
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