Azure Universal Print

The long-awaited cloud printing solution from Microsoft is on the way and available now in Preview for specific customers in Commercial and Education tracks. You must be also be a Microsoft 365 customer to integrate this Azure solution.

You can find the announcement from Microsoft here: Azure Universal Print Announcement.

I’m looking forward to the Public Preview for this so that I can deploy a printer in a few different scenarios for testing. I am excited to see the serverless infrastructure and how Azure has integrated this into Microsoft 365.

I have some ‘fond’ memories of deploying printers with and without group policy (Windows Server Active Directory Group Policies). I’ve found that using group policy is by far the most consistent way to deploy printers to groups of people in an organization, but it’s not always the right answer; and it fails to address mobile staff that work out of multiple offices.

My vision for this Azure Universal Print service would include the ability to geo-locate and take advantage of dynamic group memberships. Any incremental improvement to printing technologies and how we use them out of our Windows environments is certainly welcomed. Despite the emphasis on a paper-less world, we will always need to print some documents for business purposes; so I personally welcome any improvements in this area.

Bring on the Preview!