We worked with a large company with a huge background in providing print solutions that had recently been developing a new cloud-based offering which whilst relatively new, met all the business requirements. It was hosted by the supplier, delivered over the internet, integrated with multiple organisations and there was no on-premises equipment other than the print devices themselves. Due to the early adoptions of such a leading technology we worked closely with the vendor and customer to ensure the engagement was of mutual benefit and always maintained a fall-back option should there be any negative impact on the business operations.

The engagement included the delivery of several printers across multiple office locations with each device only requiring and internet connection, allowing it to send traffic back to the cloud platform over the internet with no requirement for a print server, management server or VPN. The platform was configured to facilitate single sign-on from two different directories by integrating it with Azure AD in two separate tenancies and allowing users to self-register for printing. The option is there to integrate with additional tenancies in future and the platform can scale as business’s needs grow.

A single application was deployed to end user devices, which installed a universal print driver, created the print queue and handled the first-time user registration and connection to the cloud platform. This meant there was no requirement for any group policy to create or manage print queues.

From a security perspective, standard secure print jobs never leave the customers network and aren’t sent back to the cloud. Guest print and scan to email jobs are sent back to the cloud securely and are deleted once processed. No jobs are released without the user having to authenticate at the device.

The engagement was a great opportunity to be part of the early testing and to feed into the future development of the solution via meetings with the senior development team. The product has come on a long way in a very short period and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the future and are excited to see how it develops going forward.