Digital transformation has been with us for some years, but with the global pandemic, it has quickly become an urgent reality for many organizations. With the various lockdowns around the globe, companies suddenly had to adjust their business processes and enable workers to work from home (WFH) while others are in the office. IT professionals must ensure printing is still secure when supporting a hybrid workforce.
The market movement towards cloud has accelerated rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic and Kyocera believes Universal Print will play an integral part in the new normal.
Microsoft 365 brings together Office, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and Windows 10 Enterprise to empower people with the most innovative productivity tools. Universal Print is a new innovative technology that delivers a flexible printing environment using a cloud-based service that is part of Microsoft 365.
Universal Print is a multi-tenant, cloud-based modern print service. It moves printing to the cloud by removing the need for the on-premises print servers and Active Directory domain controllers that have been traditionally necessary for printing. Instead, Universal Print uses Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and enables IT administrators to share printers across their organization, regardless of where the end users are located. It also adds key functionality such as security groups for printer access, location-based printer discovery, and a comprehensive administrator experience.
Kyocera believes that Universal Print will accelerate the transition to a cloud-based print infrastructure as organizations look to deliver an efficient, secure and cost-effective print environment that supports today’s rapidly evolving hybrid workplace. Kyocera is working with Microsoft to offer integration with the Universal Print service on selected Kyocera devices for organizations to manage their print infrastructure through Microsoft 365 cloud services. This integration should be complete in early 2021.
Ultimately, Universal Print can be an effective tool in helping to support the printing needs of the hybrid workplace, providing remote workers with a secure way to submit print jobs either to home office printers or to any office location. Universal Print is a good answer to enterprises that are limiting their dependency on on-premises servers (including print servers),and want a more centralized approach to print management. This will help to better control costs, and reduce IT complexity as it relates to printers.
After the general availability of Universal Print, Kyocera will begin releasing new devices that natively support the platform without needing the proxy connector, and offer firmware updates for existing devices. The shift to native Universal Print will allow realizing an even more tightly integrated and seamless user and administrator experience. We believe Universal Print is certainly the way forward as organizations navigate the new demands on their traditional print infrastructure.
Kyocera looks forward to continuing the journey with Microsoft as the market continues the adoption of Universal Print.