The company has announced the launch of support for Microsoft’s Universal Print cloud infrastructure to coincide with Microsoft’s general availability release.
PaperCut customers can now enjoy the same tracking, control, and security for printing on the new Universal Print cloud print infrastructure as they have on traditional print servers.
This new compatibility means Microsoft 365 and Azure customers adopting Universal Print as part of their cloud journey can use PaperCut MF to enjoy:
- printing that just works on every platform, printer, and device
- data protection before, during, and after printing
- a reduced environmental footprint, and shrinking bills
- the ability to scan and digitise documents to work smarter
“Print management software saves our customers huge amounts of time, money, and waste every year, and we wanted to help Universal Print adopters enjoy those same savings,” said PaperCut Universal Print Product Manager, Jamie McClunie.
PaperCut has been working with Microsoft’s technical teams since 2019, when Universal Print first went in to preview (beta). This collaboration has benefited both organisations, resulting in a connector integration for PaperCut that replaces and improves upon the default Microsoft connector. Customers have been using PaperCut MF with Universal Print since the first beta release of the connector back in July 2020.
And with Microsoft announcing general availability for Universal Print, PaperCut has taken the beta tag off. Now, PaperCut MF customers can track, control, and secure their print jobs on Universal Print, backed by a global network of partners providing industry-leading support.
“We see Universal Print as the natural evolution of Windows Print Server,” McClunie said. “Our customers are rapidly adopting SaaS tools like Microsoft 365, and supporting Universal Print is just one way we’re helping support the choice of cloud infrastructure.”
“At PaperCut we’ve always been about choice, supporting our customers no matter what brand of printer or MFD, or what print infrastructure – Windows server, Linux, Mac, even Novell,” McClunie continued.
“So it was an easy choice for us to jump on Universal Print and make sure our customers could enjoy all the print management goodness of PaperCut MF on Microsoft’s new cloud print infrastructure.”
The incredible acceleration of remote working brought about by the pandemic has made the ability to print from anywhere over the internet a critical business capability.
“We’ve been pushing hard to unlock the power of cloud printing, remote printing, and serverless printing for our customers with our cloud-native PaperCut Pocket and PaperCut Hive products,” said McClunie. “That same passion applies to our flagship product as well, with Universal Print joining our existing Mobility Print and Print Deploy features to help customers overcome the challenges of traditional print environments.”
Customers with an existing installation of PaperCut MF or NG – even trial versions – can download the connector component and get started with Universal Print right away. Using PaperCut, existing printer fleets can be easily connected to Universal Print, with no firmware updates or network black boxes needed.
When PaperCut MF version 21.0 is released in April, the Universal Print integration will be included out of the box as standard, at no additional cost for PaperCut customers. All PaperCut licenses now include Universal Print support, so there is no price difference whether you are using traditional print servers or moving to the cloud.
