Today at its spring 2021 Ignite conference, Microsoft announced that its new Universal Print service is now generally available, specifically for education and enterprise users. It"s included in Windows and Microsoft 365 offerings, or can be purchased separately.
If you"re unfamiliar with Universal Print, it"s Microsoft"s attempt to kill off the print server. Not only that, but it"s meant to kill off an even bigger paint point: printer drivers. Indeed, it takes all of that Windows Server print functionality and just moved it to the cloud, and you find a dashboard for your printers on Azure.
The feature was first announced last March, and then there"s been a public preview available since July. Microsoft, of course, recommends using a printer that"s made for Universal Print, although you can also use a proxy application to hook up a printer that"s not officially supported.
When this was first announced, the Redmond firm said that it was working with Canon on supported printers, but now that we"re hitting general availability, the list has grown. You can get a Universal Print printer from Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Konica Minolta, Lexmark, Toshiba, Ricoh, and Xerox. You can learn more here.