We ran through the setup today, super simple. I think the Azure portal blades make sense, the Connector is simple, etc. We had things up and running for testing without much issue. I printed to a colleague's home office printer within 15 minutes of starting the task - instant gratification.
The real value is when printer manufacturers adopt the required firmware changes (TLS, OAuth, etc.) to have a network printer natively compatible instead of requiring the Connector. Trading a Print Server for a Connector helps in limited use cases, but eliminating both with a Universal Print compatible printer is the end game people want. It is also the only way to get to true "doesn't require any on-premises infrastructure" status in my mind.
Is there a TAP program for any of the printer vendors where we can try out and provide feedback on their new firmware updates? We have every manufacturer of printer out there it seems, so if any have programs, we would want to be involved. Can someone at Microsoft point us in the right direction? We are part of many partner TAP programs and have all the NDA pieces in place already.
Thank you.
