Answers to Your Most Pressing Questions

Start with an assessment of your current infrastructure and a clear picture of what you’re trying to achieve. From there, set measurable milestones and consider partnering with a provider or advisor experienced in print modernization, since most environments involve a mix of legacy devices and systems that can be difficult to untangle on your own.

Today it mostly shows up in workflow automation, predictive maintenance (flagging device issues before they cause downtime), and AI-driven security threat detection. Looking forward, expect more on device (edge) AI combined with cloud intelligence, plus early use cases in device awareness and automated device management.

Building a scalable, resilient, cloud native platform is technically complex. What cloud-based print management actually offers is a shift in who owns that complexity, moving the burden away from internal IT and onto a provider built to manage it at scale.

WPP is a change Microsoft introduced in Windows 11 that pushes printer vendors toward a standardized protocol (IPP) instead of custom drivers, largely in response to earlier print spooler vulnerabilities. It’s optional today but expected to become the default by 2027. Organizations with legacy devices that don’t support IPP risk losing existing print queues and drivers when WPP is enabled.

Print has historically been treated as low risk and left out of broader IT security strategy. As hackers get better at finding weak points, print has become an easier target precisely because it was ignored for so long. Data cited in the webinar shows half of organizations experienced a print-related breach in the past year.

Pharos Cloud removes the need for on-premises print servers entirely. You retire the hardware. Patching, monitoring, and maintenance work end too.

Pharos Cloud supports Zero Trust principles, end-to-end encryption, and Secure Release printing. Pharos holds SOC 2 Type II attestation and ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27017 certifications.

Pharos Cloud supports printers and MFDs from leading manufacturers, including Canon, HP, Konica Minolta, Lexmark, Ricoh, Sharp, Toshiba, and Xerox, helping organizations protect their existing hardware investments.

Timelines depend on your fleet size and environment complexity. Most organizations follow a phased rollout: assessment, pilot, then full deployment. A phased approach limits disruption during the transition.

Cloud print migration describes the process of moving your organization away from traditional print servers and to the cloud. Serverless printing describes the underlying architecture that makes it possible, enabling printing without traditional print servers in between.

Cloud print migration is the process of moving print management from on-premises print servers to a secure, cloud-native platform. With Pharos Cloud, print jobs move directly between users and printers without traditional print server hardware in between. Pharos Cloud handles authentication, routing, and job delivery behind the scenes, while IT manages printers, users, and policies from one centralized platform. This reduces the infrastructure IT needs to patch, monitor, and maintain while keeping printing simple for users.

Cloud-native print management consolidates control of diverse printer fleets through a single, centralized cloud console. This allows administrators to manage drivers, policies, and deployments for all brands—including HP, Xerox, Ricoh, and Canon—from one interface, greatly simplifying multi-vendor environments and eliminating individual endpoint configuration.

Cloud-native print management enhances security by removing the attack surface of on-premises print servers. It integrates secure print release, requiring authentication at the device, and generates detailed audit trails for compliance. This architecture also ensures print data is handled securely, aligning with modern Zero Trust principles.

A modern alternative is serverless, cloud-native print management, often referred to as PrintOps. This approach eliminates the need for on-premises print servers by centralizing print infrastructure management in the cloud, utilizing lightweight agents on endpoints to manage printing securely and efficiently.

Print servers negatively impact remote and hybrid workers by typically requiring VPN tunnels for access, which introduces latency and complexity. This often results in a poor user experience, pushing employees to seek unmanaged workarounds that can create new security risks outside of IT control.

Hidden costs of print servers include expensive Windows Server and Client Access Licenses (CALs), significant IT staff hours for patching, maintenance, and driver compatibility testing, and the energy/cooling for physical hardware. These distributed costs, along with hardware refresh cycles and potential redundancy infrastructure, contribute to substantial total ownership expenses.

Direct IP printing is generally not secure enough for enterprise environments due to a lack of encryption for print data, no authentication beyond network access, and no audit trail capabilities. This absence of critical security features makes it challenging to meet regulatory compliance requirements and protect sensitive information.

Direct IP printing connects workstations directly to individual printers, offering simplicity for small setups but lacking centralized control and security. Print servers act as an intermediary, centralizing driver management, policies, and job queuing, which provides better control and compliance for larger environments but introduces infrastructure overhead and a single point of failure.

Modern alternatives to direct IP printing often use cloud-native, serverless print management platforms. These solutions eliminate the need for on-premise print servers by handling job management, driver distribution, and security through a cloud platform, offering end-to-end encryption, secure release, and centralized control without infrastructure overhead.

Direct IP printing hinders data privacy compliance by lacking centralized logs and secure release mechanisms. Organizations cannot track who printed what, when, or where, making it impossible to demonstrate controls over sensitive data output. Unclaimed documents on printer trays further expose confidential information, creating reportable incidents.

Yes, direct IP printing can negatively impact network performance by causing unpredictable congestion. When many large print jobs are sent simultaneously, they compete with business applications, VoIP, and video conferencing for bandwidth, especially over WAN links. This can introduce latency and degrade the user experience across the entire network.

Managing printer drivers with direct IP printing is challenging because each driver must be individually deployed and updated on every workstation needing access. This process is time-consuming and prone to compatibility issues across different operating systems and applications, especially with multiple printer models and frequent manufacturer updates.

Direct IP printing significantly increases helpdesk workload because troubleshooting requires individual investigation of each user’s workstation. Without centralized management, diagnosing print failures means checking specific driver versions, port configurations, and network connectivity on the user’s machine, turning a quick fix into a prolonged support ticket.

Direct IP printing is a security risk because print jobs often transmit across the network as unencrypted plaintext, making them vulnerable to interception by attackers. This lack of encryption and centralized authentication allows sensitive data like financial or medical records to be captured and read, potentially leading to reportable data breaches without any audit trail.

Pharos Cloud currently provides the architecture, data, APIs, analytics, and centralized controls that establish an AI-ready foundation. AI-driven insights and automation are part of the platform’s continuing direction and should be described as future capabilities until individual features are formally released.

APIs allow authorized systems to retrieve operational data and initiate supported actions programmatically. They help connect print with analytics, IT workflows, automation platforms, and future AI-driven operations.

AI and agentic systems may require current data, resilient services, scalable resources, and communication between cloud platforms. Cloud-native architecture is designed to support these requirements more effectively than disconnected legacy infrastructure.

Pharos Cloud combines cloud-native architecture, detailed print data, centralized management, and open APIs. These capabilities allow authorized systems to access print information and supported actions while helping IT teams modernize operations today.

AI-ready printing means the print environment has the cloud architecture, operational data, and programmatic interfaces required to connect with intelligent enterprise systems. It creates the foundation for analytics, automation, and future AI-driven print workflows.

Ask where encryption keys are stored, how much data is retained, whether servers are ever directly internet-facing, and how quickly and transparently they respond to security incidents.

Pharos uses continuous network scanning, layered cloud security, client-side document encryption where we don’t hold the decryption keys, minimal data retention, and we strongly advise against exposing on-premises servers directly to the internet.

Print servers often handle sensitive documents, get lower security priority than other systems, and are sometimes mistakenly exposed to the internet. Past incidents show that a compromised print server can become a foothold for a much larger network breach.

AI tools have gotten much better at analyzing code and spotting subtle flaws that used to require significant manual effort to find. That capability helps defenders, but it also helps attackers discover and exploit vulnerabilities faster than before.

A zero-day is a security flaw in software that the vendor doesn’t know about yet, so there’s no patch available when it’s discovered. Attackers who find it first can exploit it before anyone has a chance to fix it.

Pharos Cloud supports electric utilities, water and wastewater utilities, natural gas and pipeline operators, and renewable energy and power generation organizations that need secure, cloud-native print management across distributed operations.

Cloud print management can help reduce reliance on on-premises print servers at dispersed sites, simplify IT and OT operations, improve security controls, and give administrators better visibility into print usage and cost.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is designed to manage enterprise printing across multi-vendor fleets through centralized control, print driver management, analytics, and supported integrations.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is built for distributed environments and supports centralized print management across control centers, plants, substations, service centers, and remote field offices, without requiring on-site print servers.

Secure release printing requires users to authenticate at the device before a document prints. This helps reduce the risk of sensitive operational or compliance documents being left unattended in control rooms, plants, or substations.

Pharos Cloud helps utilities and energy organizations eliminate print servers, centralize print administration, strengthen document security, improve visibility into print usage, and support consistent printing across highly distributed operational environments.

Utilities and energy print management is the process of securely managing printing, print infrastructure, user access, device fleets, policies, and print data across electric, gas, water, and energy organizations, including control centers, plants, substations, and field offices.

Pharos Cloud supports large property and casualty carriers, life and annuity insurers, health insurers, brokerages, agencies, title insurers, and related insurance operations that need secure, cloud-native print management.

PrintOps is the modern, integrated, user-centric, and cloud-native approach to managing printing and the infrastructure and operations behind it. For insurers, PrintOps helps bring print into the same operating model as enterprise IT: secure, governed, visible, scalable, and easier for employees to use.

Cloud print management can help insurers reduce reliance on on-premises print servers, simplify IT operations, strengthen security controls, support distributed teams, and gain better visibility into print usage and cost.

Secure release printing requires users to authenticate at the device before a document prints. This helps reduce the risk of sensitive policyholder, claims, or business documents being left unattended in output trays.

Pharos Cloud helps insurance organizations eliminate print servers, centralize print administration, strengthen document security, improve visibility into print usage, and support consistent employee printing across distributed environments.

Insurance print management is the process of securely managing printing, print infrastructure, user access, device fleets, policies, and print data across insurance companies and related distributed work environments.

Pharos Cloud supports large consulting firms, accounting and advisory organizations, legal services teams, business services enterprises, and related client-serving operations that need secure, cloud-native print management.

PrintOps is the modern, integrated, user-centric, and cloud-native approach to managing printing and the infrastructure and operations behind it. For professional services organizations, PrintOps helps bring print into the same operating model as enterprise IT: secure, governed, visible, scalable, and easier for employees to use.

Cloud print management can help reduce reliance on on-premises print servers, simplify IT operations, improve security controls, and give administrators better visibility into print usage and cost.

Secure release printing requires users to authenticate at the device before a document prints. This helps reduce the risk of confidential client or business documents being left unattended in output trays.

Pharos Cloud helps professional services organizations eliminate print servers, centralize print administration, strengthen document security, improve visibility into print usage, and support consistent employee printing across distributed environments.

Professional services print management is the process of securely managing printing, print infrastructure, user access, device fleets, policies, and print data across consulting firms, accounting and advisory organizations, legal services teams, business services enterprises, and other client-serving firms.

Pharos Cloud supports large manufacturing organizations across plants, warehouses, distribution sites, corporate offices, field locations, and related operations that need secure, cloud-native print management.

PrintOps is the modern, integrated, user-centric, and cloud-native approach to managing printing and the infrastructure and operations behind it. For manufacturers, PrintOps helps make print secure, governed, visible, scalable, and easier to support across operational and office environments.

Cloud-based print management can help manufacturers reduce reliance on on-premises print servers, simplify IT operations, strengthen security controls, support distributed sites, and gain better visibility into print usage and cost.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is designed to manage enterprise printing across multi-vendor fleets through centralized control, print driver management, analytics, and supported integrations.

Secure release printing requires users to authenticate at the device before a document prints. This helps reduce the risk of sensitive production, quality, shipping, employee, or business documents being left unattended in output trays.

Pharos Cloud helps manufacturers eliminate print servers, centralize print administration, strengthen document security, improve visibility into print usage, and support consistent employee printing across distributed sites.

Manufacturing print management is the centralized management of printing, print infrastructure, user access, device fleets, policies, and print data across plants, warehouses, offices, and distributed work environments.

PrintOps is the modern, integrated, user-centric, and cloud-native approach to managing printing and the infrastructure and operations behind it. For higher education, PrintOps helps make campus printing secure, visible, scalable, cost-aware, and easier for students and IT to use.

Yes. Pharos Cloud Education Edition is designed to centrally manage users, devices, drivers, policies, analytics, and supported printers across multi-vendor campus fleets.

Yes. Pharos Cloud Education Edition supports quotas, chargebacks, account management, departmental cost recovery, policies, and reporting that help institutions control and recover printing costs.

Secure release printing requires users to authenticate at the device before a document prints. This helps protect sensitive information and reduces abandoned print jobs on shared campus printers.

Yes. Pharos Cloud Education Edition supports printing from Chromebooks, mobile devices, laptops, workstations, and the web, with secure release at supported campus printers.

Pharos Cloud Education Edition helps institutions eliminate print servers, centralize administration, enable flexible student printing, strengthen document security, recover print costs, and improve visibility across campus.

Pharos Cloud supports large software and SaaS companies, IT services firms, hardware and electronics businesses, cloud and data providers, and related technology organizations that need secure, cloud-native print management.

PrintOps is the modern, integrated, user-centric, and cloud-native approach to managing printing and the infrastructure and operations behind it. For technology organizations, PrintOps helps bring print into the same operating model as enterprise IT: secure, governed, visible, scalable, and easier for employees to use.

Cloud print management can help technology companies reduce reliance on on-premises print servers, simplify IT operations, strengthen security controls, support distributed teams, and gain better visibility into print usage and cost.

Secure release printing requires users to authenticate at the device before a document prints. This helps reduce the risk of confidential product, engineering, customer, or business documents being left unattended in output trays.

Pharos Cloud helps technology organizations eliminate print servers, centralize print administration, strengthen document security, improve visibility into print usage, and support consistent employee printing across distributed environments.

Technology industry print management is the process of securely managing printing, print infrastructure, user access, device fleets, policies, and print data across software companies, IT services firms, cloud providers, hardware businesses, and other technology organizations.

Submit the strategic-alliance form with your organization, target customers, proposed solution, customer need, integration or service model, market opportunity, technical requirements, and desired timeline. The Pharos team will review the strategic and technical fit and identify the appropriate next step.

Yes. Strategic partners can request a focused product demonstration to explore Pharos Cloud capabilities, potential integration points, and the customer value of a combined solution.

Qualified partners can work with Pharos on relevant API documentation, technical guidance, solution design, integration testing, and support planning. Development or demonstration environment access is determined by the use case and alliance engagement.

Pharos and the partner define the customer use case, architecture, responsibilities, test criteria, and support model. The combined solution is then reviewed and tested against agreed functional, security, performance, interoperability, and customer-experience requirements before launch.

Yes. Pharos Cloud includes open APIs that can support approved integration and data workflows. The available APIs, documentation, permissions, and implementation approach depend on the joint solution and technical requirements.

Partners can explore solutions that connect Pharos Cloud with complementary devices, identity and endpoint platforms, workplace systems, analytics tools, business workflows, and professional or managed services.

Pharos collaborates with printer and device manufacturers, cloud and workplace platforms, systems integrators, consultancies, and technology or solution providers whose capabilities complement enterprise print management.

A Pharos strategic technology partnership brings together Pharos Cloud and a partner’s complementary technology, devices, workflows, or services to address a defined enterprise customer need. The relationship may include integration, co-development, services, and coordinated go-to-market activity.

Complete the reseller partner form with information about your organization, markets, customer base, technical and services capabilities, and business goals. The Pharos channel team will review the fit and discuss next steps.

Yes. Reseller partners can provide implementation, optimization, analytics consulting, managed services, and support based on their capabilities and program authorization.

Pharos provides sales and technical enablement, marketing collaterals, opportunity and co-selling support, implementation guidance, and ongoing partner management to help resellers build and progress their Pharos practice.

Yes. Pharos offers deal registration and price protection for qualified opportunities under applicable program rules, helping reseller partners invest confidently in active opportunities.

Depending on program authorization, resellers may sell Pharos Cloud subscriptions and offer services for assessment, implementation, optimization, analytics, managed administration, support, renewal, and expansion.

Pharos considers technology resellers, distributors, managed print providers, and solution partners who serve relevant enterprise customers and can support the customer journey. Final eligibility depends on program requirements and market fit.

Yes. Request an MSP-focused product demonstration to see how Pharos Cloud can support your customer environments, service workflows, and managed print offering.

Yes. Volume-based pricing is available based on program terms and customer volume. Contact the Pharos MSP team to discuss the commercial structure that fits your customer base and growth plans.

Pharos provides sales and technical training, customer-facing marketing resources, implementation guidance, product demonstrations, and ongoing partner management to help MSP teams build and grow their practice.

Pharos Cloud simplifies driver and queue management, automatically adds and removes queues based on location and permissions, and provides consistent direct IP and secure release workflows. These capabilities are designed to reduce common user issues and administrative effort.

Yes. Pharos Cloud streamlines enterprise print management across multi-vendor fleets and gives administrators centralized control and visibility.

Yes. Pharos enables MSPs to provision and manage customer environments, maintain separation between customer tenants, view customers from one administrative location, and add or expand environments as customer needs grow.

A print management solution helps a managed service provider (MSPs) deploy, administer, secure, monitor, and support printing for customer organizations. It gives MSP teams a repeatable way to manage customer print environments while improving visibility, security, and the end-user experience.

Complete the partner inquiry form with information about your organization, customer base, market coverage, and partnership goals. The Pharos team will review the fit and discuss the appropriate next step.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is designed for complex enterprise environments and streamlines print management across multi-vendor fleets with centralized control, analytics, direct IP printing, and secure release printing.

Pharos Cloud subscriptions, managed services, support, renewals, and expansion can create recurring revenue opportunities. Results depend on the partner model, customer portfolio, services offered, and program terms.

Pharos supports partners with sales and technical enablement, marketing resources, opportunity and co-selling support, implementation guidance, and ongoing partner management.

Partners can build customer solutions around Pharos Cloud subscriptions and services such as assessment, implementation, optimization, consulting, managed services, and support.

Pharos works with technology resellers, distributors, managed service providers, managed print providers, solution partners, and strategic technology partners who help customers modernize and manage enterprise print.

Pharos Cloud is built for enterprise reliability, with more than 99.999% system availability. Direct IP printing also allows supported print jobs to travel directly from the user’s device to the printer, helping reduce reliance on centralized print infrastructure.

Pharos Systems International (“Pharos”) provides print insights and analytics that help administrators understand activity across users, devices, locations, and print jobs. Healthcare organizations can use this visibility to identify underused devices, unusual activity, costly printing patterns, and opportunities to improve policies, fleet decisions, and resource allocation.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is built to support enterprise printing across multi-vendor fleets. Centralized administration and universal print driver capabilities help IT teams manage diverse devices while giving employees a more consistent printing experience.

Pharos Cloud enables direct IP and secure release printing without relying on traditional on-premises print servers. Eliminating print servers can reduce infrastructure complexity, maintenance, patching, and potential points of vulnerability while supporting a more cloud-focused IT strategy.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is designed for distributed enterprise environments and can centrally manage printing across hospitals, outpatient clinics, long-term care facilities, administrative offices, and other supported locations. Healthcare IT teams can apply consistent workflows and policies while maintaining visibility across the organization.

Pharos Cloud provides capabilities that can support healthcare security and compliance programs, including secure release printing, user authentication, end-to-end encryption, centralized policy management, and detailed print activity data. However, no print management platform alone makes an organization HIPAA compliant. Compliance depends on how technology is configured and used within the organization’s broader safeguards and policies.

Secure release printing holds a document until an authorized user authenticates at the printer or multifunction device. This helps prevent patient records, prescriptions, billing information, and other sensitive documents from being left unattended in output trays or collected by the wrong person.

Pharos Cloud gives healthcare IT teams a centralized, cloud-native platform for managing users, devices, print workflows, policies, and analytics across distributed locations. It can help organizations eliminate print servers, strengthen document security, reduce administrative work, and improve visibility into printing across multi-vendor fleets.

Healthcare print management is the centralized control of printing, devices, user access, security policies, print infrastructure, and usage data across hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, and administrative locations. Modern print management helps healthcare IT teams secure sensitive documents, simplify operations, control costs, and maintain a consistent printing experience.

By improving reliability, reducing dependence on aging infrastructure, and centralizing administration, manufacturers can minimize print-related disruptions that affect production schedules, warehouse operations, shipping, and compliance workflows.

Pharos Cloud supports large financial services organizations across banks, credit unions, investment firms, brokerages, wealth management teams, fintech organizations, and related financial operations that need secure, cloud-native print management.

PrintOps is the modern, integrated, user-centric, and cloud-native approach to managing printing and the infrastructure and operations behind it. For financial services organizations, upgrading to PrintOps helps bring print into the same operating model as enterprise IT: secure, governed, visible, scalable, and easier for employees to use.

Cloud print management can help reduce reliance on on-premises print servers, simplify IT operations, improve security controls, and give administrators better visibility into print usage and cost within the financial industry.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is designed to manage enterprise printing across multi-vendor fleets through centralized control, print driver management, analytics, and supported integrations.

Secure release printing requires users to authenticate at the device before a document prints. This helps reduce the risk of sensitive documents being left unattended in output trays.

Pharos Cloud helps financial services organizations eliminate print servers, centralize print administration, strengthen document security, improve visibility into print usage, and support consistent, strategic employee printing across distributed environments.

Financial services print management is the process of securely managing printing, print infrastructure, user access, device fleets, policies, and print data across banks, credit unions, investment firms, and other financial institutions.

Yes. Cloud-native platforms enable centralized management of users, printers, and policies across plants, warehouses, distribution centers, and corporate offices, making it easier to maintain consistent operations and roll out new locations.

Even highly automated manufacturing environments rely on printed shipping labels, pallet labels, inventory labels, production travelers, work orders, quality inspection forms, maintenance procedures, compliance documentation, and traceability records. These documents support critical production, warehouse, and logistics workflows.

Modern print infrastructure helps manufacturers keep production, warehousing, shipping, and compliance running smoothly. Learn how cloud-native print management improves reliability, standardizes operations, and reduces downtime across multiple facilities.

Yes. Modern print platforms are designed to support business-critical printing throughout production facilities, warehouses, distribution centers, engineering teams, and corporate offices while helping maintain operational continuity.

Cloud-native print management helps manufacturers reduce downtime risk, standardize printing across facilities, simplify administration, improve operational visibility, and provide a more reliable printing experience for production and warehouse teams.

Modernizing print infrastructure helps reduce downtime risk, standardize operations across plants, improve warehouse efficiency, simplify IT administration, strengthen security, and support more consistent production workflows.

Modern print infrastructure provides the reliability, security, and centralized management needed to support business-critical manufacturing workflows such as production travelers, pallet labels, inventory labels, shipping documentation, quality inspections, traceability records, and compliance reporting across multiple facilities.

Windows Ready Print is Microsoft’s modernized, driver-light standard for connecting to printers. Windows Protected Print is the related security mode that blocks third-party print drivers, closing off vulnerabilities like the ones behind PrintNightmare.

Yes. Many organizations combine managed print services for hardware and maintenance with a separate print management platform for policies, analytics, and secure workflows. The two approaches are complementary.

It prevents documents from sitting unattended on printers, which protects sensitive information. It also reduces waste, because jobs that are never released can expire instead of being printed and discarded.

Users print to a secure queue instead of a specific printer. Jobs are held until the user authenticates at a device, often with a badge, QR code, or PIN. Only then does the document appear on paper.

Managed print services focus on devices, supplies, and field service. Print management focuses on users, policies, workflows, and data. MPS outsources the hardware side of printing, while print management shapes how printing occurs.

Print management is the control of printing across an organization. It covers who can print, where they can print, how secure those workflows are, and how usage is tracked and optimized.

Unpatched devices, unencrypted traffic, servers that fall behind on updates, and printouts left sitting in a tray for anyone to see. Any of those can turn into a policy or regulatory problem fast.

Each one needs hardware or virtual resources, licensing, patching, monitoring, and support time. One server doesn’t look like much; a fleet of them around the world adds up fast. And don’t forget the electricity and cooling for the room they sit in.

Different manufacturers, models, and operating systems all need their own drivers, and each one gets updated on its own schedule. Multiply that across an enterprise fleet and it turns into a real, ongoing workload.

They centralize drivers and queues, which makes it far easier to publish printers and manage a busy network from one place.

Serverless printing can be secure when it includes enterprise controls such as encryption, user authentication, secure print release, policy enforcement, auditability, and Zero Trust-aligned validation of users and devices.

Pharos Cloud expands release options by supporting authentication through card readers or badges, mobile devices for QR code release, and keyboard login credentials such as passcodes or PINs. This is useful when pull printing is required but QR code release alone is not practical for every employee.

Pharos Cloud complements Universal Print when print is part of a broader enterprise modernization effort and IT needs pull printing workflows, flexible authentication, print analytics, support for additional operating systems and mobile devices, or consistent release experiences across many locations, printers, and user groups.

Universal Print can work well on its own when your organization needs a Microsoft-native cloud print solution, has straightforward printing requirements, and can use Universal Print’s native direct or secure print workflows. Pharos Cloud complements Universal Print when you need pull printing workflows that do not rely only on mobile QR release, flexible authentication, print analytics, iOS printing, or consistent release experiences across complex environments.

Serverless printing can reduce costs by eliminating server hardware, reducing maintenance work, simplifying administration, and lowering print-related IT overhead. Actual savings depend on the organization’s current infrastructure, support burden, fleet size, and migration plan.

Enterprises should start by assessing the current print environment, mapping print servers and queues, reviewing security and network requirements, piloting with a limited group, and then rolling out in phases across users, locations, and printer fleets.

Potential challenges include network dependency, initial configuration complexity, identity and security integration, user change management, and the need to select the right cloud or hybrid model for the organization’s requirements.

Not exactly. Cloud printing is a broad category that refers to managing or enabling printing through cloud-based services. Serverless printing specifically focuses on eliminating dedicated print servers while using direct IP printing, cloud management, or secure release workflows.

Serverless printing typically uses direct IP printing for job delivery and a cloud management console for administration. IT teams can manage printer access, security policies, driver deployment, secur release, and usage tracking without maintaining traditional print servers.

Yes. Cloud-native print management is designed for distributed healthcare environments, allowing IT teams to centrally manage users, devices, and policies across hospitals, clinics, physician practices, and administrative offices.

Modern platforms support identity-based authentication, encrypted communications, secure release printing, centralized policy management, and detailed audit trails. These capabilities help organizations better protect sensitive patient information and align print with broader cybersecurity strategies.

No. Printing remains essential in healthcare. Cloud-native print management modernizes the infrastructure behind printing without disrupting the workflows clinicians rely on for patient care.

Legacy print environments often rely on aging servers, manual administration, and inconsistent security practices. Modern print infrastructure reduces operational complexity, strengthens security, and improves scalability while supporting critical clinical workflows.

Windows Protected Print is Microsoft’s new print architecture designed to reduce reliance on third-party print drivers. As organizations adopt Windows Protected Print, healthcare IT teams have an opportunity to modernize print infrastructure, improve security, and simplify long-term management.

Yes. Cloud-native print management is designed to support distributed healthcare environments. IT teams can centrally manage users, printers, policies, and reporting across hospitals, outpatient facilities, physician practices, and remote locations.

Despite widespread digital transformation, printing remains essential for many clinical and administrative workflows. Patient wristbands, medication labels, specimen labels, discharge instructions, prescriptions, consent forms, referrals, and billing documents all require reliable printing.

Pharos Cloud enables secure, consistent printing across distributed offices, hybrid work environments, and remote users without relying on traditional print server infrastructure.

Cloud-native architecture, centralized management, secure release printing, and policy-based controls ensure employees have a reliable printing experience while IT maintains visibility, governance, and security across all locations.

Pharos is leading the transformation to PrintOps—the modern, integrated, people-centric, and cloud-native approach to enterprise print management.

As organizations increasingly adopt AI, automation, and cloud-native IT operations, Pharos will continue expanding its platform through deeper integrations, richer analytics, automation, and AI-driven capabilities that help organizations manage print as a connected, intelligent, and fully governed enterprise service. Stay up to date via Pharos News.

AI depends on infrastructure that is cloud-native, data-rich, and connected through APIs. Pharos Cloud provides that foundation by combining cloud-native architecture, rich operational data, and open APIs that connect print into broader IT workflows. This positions organizations to take advantage of future AI-driven insights, automation, and agentic IT operations while modernizing print today.

Yes. Pharos Insights provides real-time analytics and reporting that deliver visibility into print usage, costs, device utilization, and user behavior across the enterprise.

These insights help organizations identify waste, optimize print infrastructure, enforce policies, support internal reporting requirements, and measure progress toward operational efficiency and sustainability objectives.

Pharos helps organizations reduce unnecessary printing through analytics, policy-based controls, and visibility into print behavior. By understanding usage patterns and enforcing print policies, organizations can reduce paper consumption, waste, and associated operating costs.

At the same time, eliminating print servers reduces infrastructure requirements and supports broader IT modernization efforts, helping organizations improve operational efficiency while advancing sustainability initiatives.

Pharos Cloud is built on a resilient cloud-native architecture designed for high availability and business continuity. Containerized infrastructure, automated failover, multi-availability zone redundancy, and continuous monitoring help ensure reliable operation even during infrastructure events.

For organizations requiring local printing continuity, Direct IP failover enables users to continue printing during internet outages, helping maintain business operations while reducing dependence on traditional print servers. Learn more at the Pharos Trust Center.

Yes. Pharos provides enterprise customers with access to experienced implementation specialists, Professional Services, Customer Success, and global technical support to help maximize the value of their investment.

Available engagement models vary based on customer requirements and subscription level. Your Pharos representative can discuss the support and account management options available for your organization.

Pharos Cloud is built on a cloud-native architecture designed for enterprise reliability, delivering 99.999% uptime through containerized infrastructure, automated failover, and multi-availability zone redundancy.

Support offerings and service commitments vary based on customer agreements. Your Pharos representative can provide details on the support plan and service levels that best fit your organization’s requirements. Contact Pharos for more information.

Pharos provides 24/7 global support with rapid issue resolution to minimize downtime and disruption. Visit the Help Center or learn more about Pharos Services.

For technical assistance or product support, users should visit the Pharos Help Center

Pharos extends beyond secure printing by enabling organizations to automate print management through policy-based controls, centralized governance, analytics, and open APIs.

These capabilities allow print to integrate with broader IT workflows, supporting automation, reporting, identity management, and future AI-driven operations as part of a modern PrintOps strategy.

Pharos provides centralized, policy-based management that allows organizations to enforce print policies across users, departments, locations, and devices.

Administrators can manage authentication, secure release printing, printing permissions, quotas, cost allocation, reporting, and other governance policies through a centralized management platform, ensuring consistent control across distributed environments.

Pharos Cloud is designed to simplify enterprise print management across distributed environments. Centralized administration, cloud-native architecture, and policy-based management reduce operational complexity while supporting large, multi-vendor fleets.

Pharos Professional Services work closely with organizations to plan deployments that align with existing endpoint management strategies and enterprise IT standards.

Pharos Cloud is purpose-built for enterprise organizations with complex, multi-vendor print environments. The platform supports a wide range of printer manufacturers and models while providing a consistent user experience and centralized management across the fleet. View the full list of supported printers and MFDs.

Features such as native IPP Everywhere support, centralized driver management, and policy-based administration help organizations simplify operations while maintaining flexibility as their print environment evolves.

Pharos Cloud is built to integrate with the broader enterprise IT ecosystem. Through open APIs and support for enterprise identity and automation platforms, organizations can connect print management with identity providers, IT service management (ITSM), reporting, and workflow automation tools.

These integrations help IT teams centralize governance, streamline administration, automate processes, and manage print as a fully integrated enterprise service.

Pharos Cloud is designed to support modern enterprise environments and a broad range of user devices, operating systems, and multi-vendor printer fleets. Cloud-native architecture reduces reliance on traditional print servers while supporting centralized management across distributed locations.

Specific requirements vary depending on deployment model, printing workflows, and device types. Pharos works closely with customers during planning and implementation to ensure compatibility with their existing IT environment.

Yes. Pharos Professional Services help organizations successfully deploy, optimize, and modernize enterprise print environments.

Services include implementation planning, migration assistance, deployment support, workflow optimization, training, and best-practice guidance. Pharos experts work closely with customers to accelerate adoption and maximize long-term value from their PrintOps investment.

Pharos provides onboarding resources, implementation guidance, documentation, training, and ongoing support to help organizations successfully deploy and manage their print environment.

Professional Services work closely with IT teams during implementation, while user documentation and knowledge resources in the Help Center help employees quickly adopt new printing workflows. The goal is to ensure organizations realize value quickly while minimizing disruption during deployment.

Yes. Many organizations choose to begin with a pilot or phased deployment to validate functionality, user experience, and operational benefits before expanding across the enterprise.

This approach allows IT teams to modernize print incrementally while reducing deployment risk and ensuring the solution aligns with organizational requirements. Request a demo to discuss a pilot for your organization.

Pharos has more than 30 years of experience helping organizations modernize enterprise print. Migration begins with an assessment of the existing print environment, followed by a phased implementation designed to minimize disruption to users and IT operations.

Pharos works with customers to replace legacy print server infrastructure with a cloud-native platform, migrate devices and users, implement policies, and integrate print into the broader IT environment. Professional Services and proven migration methodologies help organizations transition confidently while accelerating their adoption of a modern PrintOps approach.

Subscription terms vary based on deployment size, product edition, and customer requirements. Pharos works closely with each organization to develop an agreement that aligns with its business and operational needs.

Your Pharos representative can provide detailed information about subscription terms, licensing, support options, and service agreements during the purchasing process. Contact Pharos to learn more.

ROI varies by organization, but customers typically realize savings through reduced infrastructure costs, lower administrative overhead, fewer print servers, optimized print usage, and improved operational efficiency. Learn strategies in How to Reduce Office Printing Costs.

Many organizations also benefit from improved security, simplified management, and reduced risk. For example, Citizens Bank reduced monthly print costs by 45%, while Banner Health saved more than $16 million through print optimization. Read more in our case studies.

Organizations that migrate from legacy print infrastructure to Pharos typically realize value across infrastructure, security, operations, and user experience. By eliminating print servers and simplifying print management, IT teams reduce infrastructure costs, lower administrative overhead, improve security, and gain greater visibility into print activity through centralized analytics.

Customers have achieved measurable results. Citizens Bank reduced monthly print costs by 45%, while Banner Health saved more than $16 million by optimizing its print environment with Pharos. Beyond cost savings, organizations benefit from stronger security, simplified operations, and a modern print platform designed to support long-term IT modernization. Explore more customer case studies.

Pharos believes in transparent pricing and works with customers to ensure they understand the scope of their deployment before implementation. Subscription pricing is designed to provide access to the capabilities needed to modernize print infrastructure without the ongoing costs associated with maintaining legacy print servers.

Because every enterprise environment is different, final pricing depends on factors such as deployment size, product edition, and implementation requirements. Your Pharos representative can provide a tailored proposal based on your organization’s needs. Contact the Pharos team to get started.

Pharos Cloud pricing is designed to scale with the needs of enterprise organizations. Subscription pricing is based on factors such as the number of users, deployment size, and the capabilities required to support your organization’s print environment and PrintOps strategy.

Because every organization has unique infrastructure, security, and operational requirements, Pharos works closely with customers to tailor a solution that aligns with their business goals and IT modernization initiatives. This ensures organizations pay for the capabilities they need today while providing the flexibility to scale as their print environment evolves.

For a customized pricing estimate, organizations can request a personalized quote from the Pharos team.

Pharos Cloud offers flexible, subscription-based pricing designed to meet the needs of enterprise organizations at different stages of their print modernization journey. Organizations begin with a secure, cloud-native foundation that eliminates print servers and modernizes print infrastructure, then expand capabilities as their business and IT requirements evolve.

Pricing starts at $3.00 per user, per year, with the final subscription tailored to factors such as the size of the organization, deployment requirements, and the capabilities needed to support its PrintOps strategy. This approach ensures organizations invest in the functionality that delivers the greatest value for their environment. See Pharos Cloud Pricing for details.

To receive a customized recommendation and pricing proposal, organizations can request a personalized quote from the Pharos team.

Pharos secures print through multiple layers of protection. In addition to secure release printing, the platform provides end-to-end encryption, Zero Trust architecture with per-session identity and device validation, authenticated document release, regional data residency, centralized policy enforcement, and detailed audit capabilities.

By eliminating print servers entirely, Pharos also removes one of the most common attack surfaces found in traditional print environments. Read more in Printer Vulnerabilities and Best Practices.

Pharos helps organizations meet evolving privacy requirements by providing regional data residency options, encrypted print workflows, authenticated document release, and centralized governance over print operations.

Organizations can configure where print jobs and metadata are stored to support regional compliance requirements while benefiting from a cloud-native platform designed with security and privacy at its core. Compliance ultimately depends on an organization’s specific implementation and regulatory obligations.

Pharos Cloud is built secure by design and supports modern enterprise security and compliance requirements. The platform is certified to ISO 27001 and ISO 27017 standards and has achieved SOC 2® attestation. Details are available at the Pharos Trust Center.

In addition, Pharos supports Zero Trust security principles through secure release printing, end-to-end encryption, per-session identity validation, regional data residency, and authenticated document release. Organizations can also configure regional data storage policies to help address local privacy and compliance requirements.

Security and privacy are foundational to Pharos Cloud. The platform is built secure by design, helping organizations reduce attack surfaces by eliminating print servers and aligning print operations with modern Zero Trust security principles.

Pharos Cloud protects sensitive documents through end-to-end encryption, authenticated secure release printing, and per-session identity and device validation. Regional data residency and document storage options help organizations meet local privacy and compliance requirements, while open APIs enable secure integration with the broader IT ecosystem.

Pharos demonstrates its commitment to enterprise security through internationally recognized certifications, including ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and SOC 2® attestation. Combined with continuous monitoring and cloud-native architecture, these capabilities help organizations strengthen security while modernizing print infrastructure. Learn more at the Pharos Trust Center.

Pharos secures print by eliminating print servers, reducing attack surfaces, and aligning print with Zero Trust security principles. Features include secure release printing, end-to-end encryption, per-session identity and device validation, authenticated document release, regional data residency, and certifications including ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and SOC 2® attestation. Visit the Pharos Trust Center for details.

Print infrastructure is a well-documented enterprise attack vector. Pharos addresses these risks by eliminating print servers, reducing reliance on vulnerable print spoolers, encrypting print jobs, requiring authenticated document release, and aligning print operations with Zero Trust architecture and enterprise security best practices. For an overview of common risks, see Printer Vulnerabilities and Best Practices.

Pharos also offers Pharos Cloud Education Edition, a cloud-native print management solution. Learn more about Pharos solutions for education.

Valuable reporting and access to cloud-based analytics provide insights into the device fleet and printing trends for higher education institutions.

It enables printing from any email or web-enabled device, including off-campus and mobile printing, and allows users to manage print jobs and check balances via the Pharos Print Center. Chromebook printing is also supported.

Uniprint provides tools to manage print, integrate with billing/credit card gateways, and hold users accountable by setting quotas and charging for activities.

It utilizes an ISO 27001-certified platform supporting end-to-end encryption and secure print workflows, including secure release printing. Learn more about Pharos print security.

Benefits include cost recovery, enhanced security, improved student print experience, IT staff efficiency, and insights into print environment through reporting and analytics.

Pharos Uniprint is a print management solution designed for colleges and universities to help them control and recover printing costs while providing secure and intuitive printing options for students and faculty.

Pharos Cloud is a cloud-native solution focused on eliminating print servers and simplifying infrastructure, while Pharos Blueprint is an on-premises solution for organizations preferring local control but still wanting secure and cost-effective printing, with a path to cloud migration.

Absolutely; Blueprint provides a seamless transition path for organizations seeking to modernize through cloud migration. By leveraging specialized Pharos expertise and proven deployment scripts, enterprises can transition to the Pharos Cloud platform while ensuring minimal operational disruption.

The platform is engineered for large-scale enterprises and higher education institutions with sophisticated print workflows and diverse, multi-vendor device environments.

The platform enables administrators to implement monthly page quotas and leverage more than 50 standard reports, providing the visibility needed to optimize infrastructure and lower total printing expenditures.

Pharos Blueprint protects networked hardware and maintains document integrity by requiring user validation before any print job is released through secure release printing.

Organizations achieve significant infrastructure cost reductions, strengthened security postures, and simplified IT operations, while optimizing the enterprise print environment and elevating the employee printing experience. Furthermore, the platform provides a seamless transition path for those seeking to modernize through cloud migration.

Engineered as a premier on-premises platform, Pharos Blueprint modernizes workplace printing by prioritizing security, reducing infrastructure expenditures, enhancing the user experience, and supporting corporate sustainability initiatives.

Pharos Cloud provides secure, reliable printing across distributed offices, remote workers, and hybrid environments without relying on traditional print servers. Centralized cloud management, secure release printing, policy-based controls, and cloud-native architecture deliver a consistent printing experience regardless of location.

By eliminating costly print servers, simplifying maintenance, and providing visibility into print usage to implement smart policies, Pharos Cloud helps reduce overall print expenditures. For practical strategies, see How to Reduce Office Printing Costs.

Pharos Cloud is built for enterprise reliability, security, and scale. The platform delivers:

• 99.999% uptime, backed by cloud-native, containerized architecture with multi-availability zone redundancy
• More than 30 years of innovation in enterprise print management
• Trusted by many of the world’s largest organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies and four of the five largest U.S. banks
• Continuous cloud delivery with zero-downtime updates, enabling rapid innovation without disrupting users
• Enterprise-scale architecture designed to support large, distributed organizations with thousands of users, devices, and locations

These capabilities demonstrate Pharos’ commitment to delivering the resilience, scalability, and operational excellence required by modern enterprise IT.

Pharos Cloud is a cloud-native enterprise print management platform purpose-built to help organizations modernize print infrastructure, eliminate print servers, and manage print as a secure, scalable, and fully governed IT service.

Key capabilities include:

• Centralized, web-based management across distributed and multi-vendor print environments
• Policy-based controls to enforce security, sustainability, and cost management
• Secure release printing with authenticated document release
• Direct IP printing and centralized print driver management
• Real-time analytics and reporting that provide visibility into print usage, costs, and fleet performance
• Automation and open APIs that connect print into broader IT workflows and enterprise systems
• Mobile, BYOD, Chromebook, and location-aware printing
• Enterprise-grade security with end-to-end encryption and Zero Trust principles

Together, these capabilities help organizations simplify operations, strengthen security, reduce costs, and modernize one of the last remaining legacy systems in enterprise IT.

Migrating to Pharos Cloud eliminates legacy print server infrastructure while improving security, reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency. Organizations benefit from centralized management, lower infrastructure costs, improved resilience, continuous innovation, and a modern print platform designed to support distributed workforces and future IT initiatives. See 5 Reasons to Migrate to the Cloud for more.

Pharos Cloud is a cloud-native enterprise print management platform that helps organizations eliminate print servers, strengthen security, simplify operations, and modernize print infrastructure across distributed, multi-vendor environments. Through centralized management, policy-based controls, analytics, automation, and open APIs, Pharos Cloud enables organizations to manage print as a secure, scalable, and fully governed enterprise service.

Every organization’s requirements are different, but several characteristics distinguish Pharos Cloud.

Pharos was built cloud-native from the ground up rather than adapted from legacy print infrastructure. The platform eliminates print servers, supports Zero Trust security principles, delivers enterprise-grade reliability with 99.999% uptime, provides rich analytics and open APIs, and is purpose-built for complex enterprise environments with distributed users, multi-vendor fleets, and advanced governance requirements.

Organizations evaluating print modernization should consider architecture, security, scalability, enterprise integrations, operational visibility, and long-term support for PrintOps—not simply feature parity. Our Buyer’s Guide to Print Management Software can help structure your evaluation.

PrintOps is Pharos’ vision for the future of enterprise print. Rather than treating print as a collection of devices, PrintOps manages print as a modern IT service that is cloud-native, integrated, people-centric, and secure by design.

Pharos Cloud enables this approach by combining cloud-native architecture, centralized management, analytics, automation, open APIs, and Zero Trust security principles. The result is print that is fully governed, scalable, and connected to the broader IT ecosystem—helping organizations modernize one of the last remaining legacy systems in enterprise IT.

Pharos is leading the transformation to PrintOps. Unlike many vendors that adapted legacy print software for the cloud, Pharos Cloud was built cloud-native from the ground up. The platform combines enterprise-grade reliability, Zero Trust security, rich analytics, automation, open APIs, and deep enterprise integrations to help organizations modernize one of the last remaining legacy systems in enterprise IT.

Traditional print servers are one of the last remaining legacy systems in enterprise IT, creating unnecessary cost, complexity, and security risk. Pharos replaces print servers with a cloud-native platform that reduces attack surfaces, centralizes management, improves resilience, and enables organizations to manage print as a secure, scalable, and fully governed IT service. Learn more in 5 Reasons to Migrate to the Cloud.

PrintOps is the modern, integrated, cloud-native, and user-centric approach to managing print infrastructure and operations. It combines centralized management, analytics, automation, enterprise-grade security, and seamless user experiences to transform print into a strategic IT service that supports business continuity and operational performance.

Yes. Pharos has helped many of the world’s largest organizations modernize enterprise print across industries including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, technology, and higher education.

Customer success stories include Citizens Bank, which reduced monthly print costs by 45%, and Banner Health, which saved more than $16 million through print optimization. Additional industry-specific references and case studies are available upon request.

Pharos offers a Resource Center, Help Center, Blog Posts, Case Studies, Events, Webinars, and a Knowledge Center with guides and overviews on print management topics, including What is Print Management and the Cloud Print Management Overview.

Pharos has global offices in the United States (West Henrietta, NY) and New Zealand (Auckland). Visit our About or Contact pages for more information.

Pharos professional services ensure solutions are optimized from day one, and ongoing support services ensure they perform reliably every day after, helping to optimize the print environment.

Pharos offers professional services for deployment, implementation, and training, as well as ongoing 24/7 global support services for ongoing management and rapid issue resolution via the Help Center.

Pharos is purpose-built for enterprise organizations looking to modernize print as part of their broader IT strategy. The platform is ideal for IT leaders responsible for managing complex, distributed print environments across multiple locations, vendors, and thousands of users.

Designed for organizations with 2,500 or more employees, Pharos helps enterprises reduce infrastructure complexity, strengthen security, improve visibility, and simplify print operations while eliminating legacy print servers.

Organizations in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, technology, higher education, and other complex enterprise environments trust Pharos to transform print into a secure, reliable, scalable, and fully governed IT service.

Pharos helps organizations transform print into a modern IT service by eliminating legacy infrastructure, strengthening security, reducing operational complexity, improving visibility, enforcing print policies, and integrating print into broader IT operations through analytics, automation, and APIs.

Pharos offers enterprise print management solutions that support organizations at every stage of modernization. Its flagship platform, Pharos Cloud, delivers cloud-native PrintOps capabilities, while Blueprint and Uniprint provide proven on-premises solutions for organizations with specific deployment requirements. Together, these solutions help organizations improve security, reduce costs, simplify operations, and modernize print infrastructure.

Founded in 1992, Pharos has more than 30 years of experience in print management innovation, including inventing secure pull-printing and developing cloud-native solutions, helping organizations simplify print and modernize infrastructure. Learn more about Pharos.

Organizations using Pharos typically reduce infrastructure costs, strengthen security, simplify IT operations, improve visibility into print activity, and create a better employee printing experience. Customers have achieved measurable results, including Citizens Bank reducing monthly print costs by 45% and Banner Health saving more than $16 million through print optimization. Explore more results in our case studies.

Pharos serves a wide range of industries, including financial services, professional services, insurance, manufacturing, technology, and education.

Pharos helps organizations reduce infrastructure costs, strengthen security, simplify print operations, improve employee experience, and gain real-time visibility into print usage. By eliminating print servers and modernizing print infrastructure, organizations can reduce operational complexity while preparing print for the future of enterprise IT.

Pharos modernizes print by replacing legacy print server infrastructure with a cloud-native platform that is built for security, reliability, and scale. Through centralized management, policy-based controls, automation, analytics, and integrations with modern IT systems, Pharos transforms print from one of the last legacy systems into a secure, governed enterprise service.

Pharos helps enterprise IT teams modernize print through PrintOps—the modern, integrated, people-centric, and cloud-native approach to managing print. Its flagship platform, Pharos Cloud, eliminates legacy print servers, strengthens security, simplifies operations, and connects print into the broader IT ecosystem through centralized management, analytics, automation, and open APIs. Pharos also offers on-premises solutions for organizations that are not yet ready to transition to the cloud.

The spooler manages the flow of data to the printer. It breaks large jobs into smaller chunks and sends them at a rate the device can handle, which prevents overload and crashes.

A print driver converts application output into printer-friendly instructions. It is the translator between computer and device.

Applications use formats like .docx or .pptx that are designed for software. Printers rely on page description languages, so a print driver must translate between the two.

Yes. Many industries still depend on printed documents for signatures, reviews, compliance, and day-to-day processes. When printing fails, work often slows or stops.

Windows Ready Print is Microsoft’s modern print architecture designed to replace traditional third-party print drivers and privileged execution with a more secure IPP-based model.

Buyers should look for cloud-native management, print-server reduction, secure release printing, direct IP printing, analytics, policy control, and support for multi-vendor fleets.

Pharos Cloud supports secure release printing, encryption, Zero Trust-aligned practices, centralized policy control, and visibility into print activity.

Yes. Cloud-native print management can reduce print server maintenance, simplify driver and queue management, centralize policies, and reduce help desk tickets.

Enterprise print management must support scale, complexity, security, multi-location operations, multi-vendor fleets, analytics, and consistent user experience across large organizations.

Pharos Cloud provides cloud-native administration, secure release printing, direct IP printing, print insights, and centralized policy control for enterprise print environments.

It improves security by standardizing policy control, supporting secure release printing, requiring authentication, protecting print workflows, and improving visibility into print activity.

Yes. A modern platform can reduce or eliminate dependence on traditional print servers by centralizing administration and supporting direct IP printing options.

Enterprises need centralized print management because distributed print environments are difficult to secure, support, and optimize when each location relies on separate servers, drivers, queues, and policies.

Centralized print management is the practice of managing printers, users, queues, drivers, policies, print jobs, and reporting from a unified platform instead of disconnected local systems.

Yes. Pharos provides a cloud-native print platform that helps organizations modernize print infrastructure, reduce operational complexity, improve security, and support hybrid work environments while minimizing disruption to end users.

Pharos helps organizations reduce reliance on legacy print infrastructure and prepare for Microsoft’s evolving print architecture. By simplifying print management and supporting cloud-first strategies, organizations can better align with future Windows printing models.

Cloud print enables users to securely print from any location without requiring VPN-dependent print servers or complex manual printer setup processes. This creates a more seamless experience for distributed workforces.

The biggest risk is accumulating technical debt while increasing security and operational exposure. The longer organizations wait, the more complex, expensive, and disruptive modernization becomes.

No. Organizations of all sizes can benefit from cloud print solutions. Small and mid-sized businesses often see significant advantages through reduced infrastructure requirements and simplified management.

In many cases, yes. Cloud print solutions often provide centralized auditing, reporting, authentication controls, and secure print release capabilities that help organizations meet regulatory and internal governance requirements.

Windows Protected Print Mode is Microsoft’s initiative to improve print security by reducing reliance on third-party print drivers and modernizing the Windows print stack. It is designed to support a more secure printing model.

Print infrastructure sits at the intersection of three risk factors: privilege, ubiquity, and access. Print drivers and spoolers run with elevated system privileges. Printers are deployed across every floor, every office, and every network segment. Both connect broadly to the systems around them. That combination — widely distributed, deeply embedded, and under-monitored — is an attack surface most security programs haven’t fully addressed. PrintNightmare was a visible example of the risk. The underlying conditions remain.

Cloud printing allows users to discover, manage, and print to devices without relying on traditional on-premises print servers. Management and delivery are handled through cloud infrastructure, simplifying administration and improving scalability.

Pharos Cloud supports Print as a Service through cloud-native management, secure release printing, direct IP printing, print insights, and centralized control.

IT should look for secure release printing, centralized policy control, direct IP printing options, strong reporting, fleet visibility, reliable user experience, and the ability to support phased modernization.

It can reduce or eliminate reliance on traditional print servers depending on the environment, device fleet, and selected print architecture.

Enterprises use Print as a Service to reduce infrastructure complexity, improve security, support hybrid work, gain visibility, simplify print administration, and make printing easier to manage across distributed locations.

Cloud hosting can move legacy print software to hosted infrastructure, while true Print as a Service reduces operational burden through cloud-native management, centralized control, updates, security, and reporting.

Print as a Service is a cloud-based model for managing enterprise printing through a service platform instead of relying primarily on on-premises print infrastructure.

The audit should lead to a prioritized action plan that covers device consolidation, policy updates, security improvements, cost reduction, and ongoing measurement.

Organizations should review print data regularly and conduct deeper audits when costs rise, fleets change, policies shift, office locations change, or IT modernization projects begin.

Pharos Insights scans the network, collects printer and usage data, and displays the information in dashboards that help IT identify trends and opportunities.

A print audit can collect printer inventory, meter readings, supplies data, print volume, user behavior, department trends, color usage, duplex behavior, device utilization, and policy exceptions.

A print audit helps organizations understand where print costs, waste, and inefficiencies are coming from so they can make data-driven decisions.

A print audit is a review of an organization’s printers, print usage, costs, device utilization, and user behavior to identify opportunities for savings, efficiency, and better control.

Start with the workflows that involve sensitive documents, shared devices, unauthenticated release, or legacy infrastructure. Then add secure release printing, encryption, centralized policy control, print-server reduction, and better reporting.

Printer security focuses on the device itself, including firmware, credentials, ports, and configuration. Print security is broader and includes users, documents, print jobs, release workflows, infrastructure, policies, and reporting.

Print servers can create risk when they increase administrative complexity, require ongoing patching, depend on legacy drivers, or concentrate print workflows in infrastructure that is difficult to monitor and secure.

Useful reports show user activity, device activity, release locations, policy enforcement, print volumes, and exceptions. These reports help IT investigate issues, support audits, and verify whether controls are working.

Secure release printing holds a job until the user authenticates at the device. This helps prevent sensitive documents from sitting unattended and gives IT stronger control over who releases documents and where.

Shared printers are a concern because multiple users may release documents to the same physical location. Without authentication and secure release controls, sensitive documents can be viewed, taken, or mixed with other users’ output.

IT should audit required print servers, queues, and drivers; devices in shared or public areas; workflows involving sensitive or regulated documents; jobs released without authentication; and reports showing who printed, where jobs were released, and whether policies were followed.

One of the most common risks is sensitive documents being released without user authentication and left unattended at shared printers. Legacy print servers, weak audit trails, and unencrypted workflows can also create hidden exposure.

Yes. Office printers process sensitive documents, connect to business networks, and often sit in shared spaces. Without modern controls, they can expose information through unclaimed documents, weak authentication, legacy infrastructure, or limited reporting.

Start with visibility. Identify printers, users, queues, print servers, sensitive workflows, and current release controls. Then prioritize authentication, encrypted delivery, policy enforcement, and reporting for the highest-risk workflows.

Yes, when paired with cloud-native print management and infrastructure modernization. Reducing reliance on traditional print servers can lower administrative burden and reduce exposure from legacy print components.

Useful print data includes who printed, where jobs were released, which devices were used, whether authentication occurred, which policies applied, and whether unusual usage patterns appeared. This data helps IT validate and refine controls.

Printers matter because they are networked endpoints that process sensitive documents and interact with users, workstations, print services, and physical spaces. If they are trusted by default, they can create gaps in the broader Zero Trust model.

The core principles include verifying users and devices, protecting print communication, enforcing least-privilege access, applying dynamic policy, monitoring print activity, and using data to improve the security posture over time.

Pharos supports Zero Trust printing through secure release workflows, user and device validation, encrypted print delivery, centralized policy control, reduced legacy infrastructure dependence, and print insights.

It should not. With the right platform, Zero Trust-aligned controls can protect documents and validate users while preserving a simple, consistent print experience.

Security teams should treat WPP as one layer in a broader print security strategy. It is useful, but the full environment still needs user authentication, encrypted delivery, secure document release, infrastructure simplification, and reporting.

Yes. WPP can affect printers, drivers, queues, scripts, and workflows that depend on traditional Windows print behavior. Enterprises should test representative devices and user groups before enabling it broadly.

IT should inventory printers, MFDs, drivers, queues, print servers, deployment scripts, specialized print workflows, and user groups that rely on advanced print features. This helps teams identify compatibility issues before a broad rollout.

WPP can help reduce some risks tied to legacy third-party print drivers and older Windows print behavior. It does not, by itself, replace authentication, secure release printing, encryption, reporting, or print-server modernization.

No. WPP is a Windows print mode that changes how Windows handles print drivers and print paths. Cloud print management is a broader approach to managing print infrastructure, users, policies, security, and visibility through a cloud-native platform.

Pharos helps organizations secure printing today and prepare for WPP-enabled environments through cloud-native management, secure release workflows, direct IP printing options, centralized visibility, and ongoing support for the modern Windows print stack.

WPP reduces reliance on third-party print drivers and moves Windows printing toward a more standardized, driverless model. That can reduce some legacy driver risk, but it may also affect existing print configurations.

Not always. Enterprises should first assess printer compatibility, driver dependencies, existing queues, scripts, specialized workflows, and user impact. Enabling WPP too quickly may disrupt printing if the environment is not ready.

Not necessarily. WPP can improve the Windows print stack, but secure printing also depends on authentication, encryption, print-server reduction, policy control, and visibility. Organizations can strengthen print security today with a modern print platform while planning for WPP readiness.

Pharos Cloud Education Edition helps colleges and universities modernize campus printing with cloud-native management, secure release, cost recovery, analytics, mobile printing, Chromebook printing, and centralized control.

Colleges can reduce print-related IT burden by eliminating print servers, simplifying driver management, centralizing administration, and using analytics to identify recurring issues.

Cloud print management can make it easier for students to print from personal devices, release jobs securely, manage balances, and access self-service support.

Yes. Even as print volumes decline, students, faculty, staff, libraries, labs, and departments still need reliable access to printing for academic and administrative work.

Universities are moving print management to the cloud to reduce server maintenance, simplify administration, improve student printing, strengthen security, and gain better visibility into usage and costs.

Higher education print management is the centralized management of student, faculty, and staff printing, print infrastructure, user access, campus devices, policies, accounts, costs, and print data across colleges and universities.

Pharos Cloud helps enterprises eliminate print servers and manage printing through a cloud-native PrintOps platform with Direct IP printing, Secure Release, policy controls, a universal print driver, and print insights.

Enterprises should look for cloud-native administration, direct-to-printer workflows, secure release, multi-vendor fleet support, simplified driver management, analytics, and strong security controls.

Yes. A serverless print architecture can support secure release workflows that hold jobs until an authorized user authenticates at the printer.

Enterprises are replacing print servers to reduce infrastructure overhead, simplify administration, improve security, support hybrid work, and gain better visibility into print operations.

Cloud printing is a broad category. Serverless printing specifically focuses on eliminating print servers while using cloud-based management and secure delivery workflows.

Pharos Cloud and Secure Release Printing help enterprises protect documents, validate user access, encrypt print workflows, and manage print security centrally.

Secure printing supports Zero Trust by verifying users and devices, limiting access to print resources, protecting data, and creating visibility into print activity.

Enterprise secure printing should include user authentication, secure release, encryption, audit trails, reporting, policy management, and centralized visibility.

Secure printing helps prevent sensitive documents from being viewed, intercepted, mishandled, or left unattended while supporting compliance and security goals.

Secure printing solutions protect print jobs, printed documents, users, devices, and print workflows from unauthorized access or exposure.

Pharos provides cloud-native print management and print insights that help enterprise teams understand usage, costs, device activity, and opportunities to optimize the print environment.

Enterprise IT, infrastructure, finance, procurement, facilities, sustainability, and workplace teams may use print monitoring data to manage cost, performance, governance, and planning.

It helps teams identify waste, high-volume workflows, underused devices, and policy opportunities that can reduce unnecessary printing and improve fleet decisions.

It can track page volume, users, departments, devices, print job attributes, costs, toner levels, device status, utilization, and sustainability-related metrics.

Print monitoring focuses on visibility into print activity and performance. Print management includes monitoring plus the tools and policies used to control, secure, route, and optimize printing.

Print monitoring software tracks print activity, usage, costs, and device performance so organizations can understand and improve their print environment.

Pharos Cloud helps organizations reduce print-server dependence, strengthen print security, support direct IP printing, and improve operational visibility through print insights.

They can reduce attack surface by modernizing print architecture, limiting legacy dependencies, strengthening document controls, and improving visibility into print activity and policy enforcement.

A more modern approach reduces or eliminates print-server dependence, strengthens control over print workflows, and simplifies administration through cloud-native print management.

Patching is necessary, but it does not remove the underlying architectural issues created by print-server dependence, legacy drivers, and fragmented print administration.

It exposed how deeply print servers, spooler services, and legacy print workflows can affect infrastructure security, administrative burden, and risk across large environments.

PrintNightmare refers to a set of Windows print spooler vulnerabilities that showed how print infrastructure can create serious enterprise security risk.

Cloud printing improves security, simplifies infrastructure management, reduces hardware overhead, and better supports hybrid work environments with mobile and remote printing capabilities.

AI is enabling organizations to move from reactive reporting to proactive automation. Agentic AI systems can monitor print environments continuously and take corrective actions before issues disrupt operations.

Print analytics can identify wasteful workflows, underutilized devices, excessive color printing, and unnecessary hardware purchases. They also illuminate the infrastructure investments currently required to support print, which is foundational information when planning for migration to the cloud. These insights help organizations optimize fleets and reduce operational expenses.

Hybrid work environments have made print behavior less centralized and less predictable. Organizations now prioritize efficiency, security, employee experience, and device optimization over simple page-count metrics.

The most valuable metrics are the ones tied directly to operational improvements and business outcomes. These often include device utilization, secure print adoption, print-related support incidents, infrastructure compliance, and print cost trends.

It gives IT a more flexible way to support printing across offices and changing work patterns without maintaining the same level of local print infrastructure in every location.

Yes. Enterprise-ready cloud print management is designed to support large, complex environments with many users, multiple locations, and mixed printer fleets while giving IT centralized visibility and control.

The main benefits include lower infrastructure overhead, reduced IT burden, stronger security, better support for hybrid work, improved user experience, and better visibility into print activity and costs.

Cloud print infrastructure is a modern approach to managing printing through a cloud-native platform instead of relying on traditional on-prem print servers. It helps centralize control, simplify administration, improve security, and support printing across distributed environments.

Pharos helps enterprises reduce printing costs by simplifying infrastructure, improving visibility, supporting secure release printing, enabling direct IP printing, and providing the centralized control needed to reduce waste and lower IT burden.

Yes. Policies such as duplex defaults, black-and-white defaults, role-based permissions, and usage rules can reduce unnecessary output and encourage more cost-effective print behavior.

Print analytics help organizations see where waste happens, identify high-cost patterns, track color usage, understand device utilization, and make better decisions about policies and fleet management.

The biggest cost drivers usually include consumables, device maintenance, print infrastructure, IT support time, unnecessary color printing, abandoned print jobs, and limited visibility into print behavior.

Pharos Cloud is the Pharos cloud-native print management platform for enterprises and is designed to simplify print operations while improving visibility, security, and user experience.

Key priorities include cloud-native architecture, centralized administration, secure release printing, analytics, scalability, and a better user experience.

It helps reduce IT burden, improve document security, support hybrid work, and create a better user experience across large and distributed environments.

Traditional print management depends more heavily on local print servers and manual administration, while modern print management uses more centralized, cloud-native approaches that improve visibility, security, and scalability.

Cloud-hosted solutions may move parts of the print-management stack off site, but they can still carry older infrastructure patterns. Cloud-native print management is designed from the ground up for cloud delivery and usually offers a more modern approach to scalability, simplicity, and centralized control.

Yes. It is especially useful for organizations with many users, multiple locations, and mixed printer fleets because it can simplify administration and support enterprise-wide visibility and control.

The main benefits include lower infrastructure complexity, reduced IT burden, stronger security, better support for hybrid work, improved user experience, and better visibility into print activity and costs.

Organizations with many users, multiple locations, mixed printer fleets, and stronger security or operational requirements are especially likely to benefit from a cloud-native approach.

Yes. A modern cloud print platform can help improve security through centralized policy control, secure release printing, encrypted workflows, and stronger alignment with Zero Trust practices.

A cloud print server moves the traditional server model into a hosted environment. Cloud-native print management is designed to move beyond that model and simplify infrastructure more fundamentally.

The stronger alternative is cloud-native print management, which is designed to reduce dependence on print servers and simplify how printing is delivered, managed, and secured.

It can still preserve too much infrastructure complexity, administrative burden, and security overhead, especially for large organizations with complex print environments.

A cloud print server is a hosted version of a traditional print server that manages print queues and printer communication through a cloud environment instead of an on-prem server.

Start by gaining visibility into your print environment, identifying dependencies, and introducing IPP-based printing where possible.

Microsoft introduced WPP in 2024 and is expected to make it the preferred and eventually default printing model over the next several years, with major transition milestones occurring between 2025 and 2027.

IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) is a standardized, print communication protocol that enables more modern, driverless, and secure printing between workstations and print devices.

Printers are not impacted directly by Windows Ready Print. However, when WPP is enabled, traditional drivers and print queues disappear. The user will see printers disappear from the operating system unless organizations have prepared compatible IPP-based infrastructure.

Microsoft is prioritizing security and reducing high-privilege attack surfaces inside Windows. Traditional print drivers and spoolers have long represented complex and difficult to secure components within the operating system.

Windows Protected Print is Microsoft’s operating system enforcement requiring the use of Windows Ready Print – forcing the replacement of traditional third-party print drivers and privileged execution with a more secure IPP-based model.

Yes. Printed documents often contain sensitive data including financial information, healthcare records, legal documents, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information (PII). Unsecured print workflows can lead to data exposure, compliance violations, and insider risk.

No. Any organization handling sensitive information—including legal firms, higher education institutions, healthcare providers, financial services organizations, and enterprises with hybrid workforces—can benefit from securing print workflows.

Pharos Cloud supports Zero Trust-aligned printing by enabling:

• User authentication before release 
• Securely held print jobs 
• Encrypted print workflows 
• Full audit trails 
• Reduced exposure of sensitive documents 

These controls help organizations extend identity-centric security policies to print environments.

Secure release printing supports Zero Trust by requiring users to authenticate before documents are released. That reduces implicit trust, protects sensitive documents, and limits exposure at shared printers.

Regulated industries—including federal agencies, healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and state/local governments—are actively mapping their environments to Zero Trust frameworks. As organizations mature their security posture, unmanaged print workflows increasingly stand out as inconsistent with Zero Trust principles.

Not directly. NIST 800-207 focuses on principles like identity verification, least privilege access, and continuous authentication across enterprise systems. While print is not a major focus within the framework, secure printing workflows align naturally with those principles.

Most Zero Trust initiatives focus on endpoints, identity, applications, and network access, but printing is frequently overlooked. In many organizations, users can still send sensitive documents to shared printers where they remain unattended or accessible without verification. That creates a blind spot in otherwise secure environments.

No. Organizations of many sizes are modernizing print, especially those managing distributed or hybrid environments.

In many environments, yes. Eliminating print servers reduces the ongoing burden of server maintenance, patching, driver management, and troubleshooting. But one often overlooked benefit is reducing the operational burden tied to technology training and institutional knowledge.

With traditional print servers, IT teams are responsible for continuously learning, maintaining, and upgrading server infrastructure. For example, when organizations upgrade from an older Windows Server environment to a newer version, teams must either maintain existing configurations without leveraging new capabilities or spend time learning and implementing updated features. Moving print management to the cloud shifts much of that responsibility to the provider.

Cloud-based management can also reduce dependency on individual administrators and undocumented knowledge. In many organizations, the person who originally configured and managed the print environment may no longer be in that role, leaving others to reverse engineer systems and configurations over time.

A useful comparison is email infrastructure. Years ago, IT teams spent significant time managing on-prem Exchange servers to support Outlook. Today, most organizations rely on cloud-based email platforms where infrastructure management happens behind the scenes. Print modernization is increasingly following a similar path.

To reduce infrastructure overhead, simplify management, improve support for hybrid work, and align print with broader cloud strategies.

Modern cloud print platforms often provide centralized authentication, auditing, and policy management, which can improve consistency and visibility.

Usually not. Many modernization efforts keep existing printers and focus on changing management infrastructure instead.

Traditional print servers rely on on-prem infrastructure to manage print queues, drivers, and routing. Cloud print management centralizes these functions in the cloud.

Cloud print management centralizes oversight, applies consistent policies across branches, removes the need for local print servers, and enhances security by supporting Zero Trust security principles.

Cloud solutions deliver secure, consistent print access across remote offices and mobile devices, reducing the need for VPNs or local infrastructure.

Customers reduce server maintenance, improve uptime, gain real time visibility, and ease the workload on IT teams. Many also integrate printing into broader IT workflows for a more streamlined and reliable print operation.

Because traditional print relies on print servers and complex drivers, IT teams are constantly firefighting issues instead of focusing on strategy.

Clarity, alignment with business priorities, and a focus on outcomes rather than technical details.

They are a major cost driver and often a source of complexity. Understanding them is critical to building an accurate financial picture.

It depends on data availability. Organizations with centralized data can move quickly, while others may need time to gather information across teams and locations.

Lack of visibility. Many teams do not have a clear view of total print cost or contract structure.

Because print is not seen as strategic. The challenge is connecting it to priorities like cost, security, and cloud transformation.

Start with a clear assessment of your environment, then use structured frameworks to build alignment and evaluate the next steps.

They often hide true costs and complexity. Many organizations have multiple contracts across locations, making visibility difficult.

Print modernization aligns print with the same cloud-first approach used across identity, applications, and security.

No. Most modernization efforts focus on infrastructure and management, not replacing devices.

Lack of visibility. Print costs, contracts, and ownership are often distributed across departments and locations.

Because it is one of the last areas of IT still dependent on legacy infrastructure, creating cost, risk, and inefficiency in otherwise modern environments.

Assuming print is low risk. In reality, it is one of the easiest ways for sensitive data to be exposed.

They should be. Treating them otherwise is one of the main reasons they fall out of security scope.

Enough to answer who, what, when, where, and outcome for print activity, plus admin changes.

Not explicitly in most regulations, but it is one of the most effective ways to prevent unauthorized access and demonstrate control.

Yes. Not because of printers themselves, but because they expose gaps in data protection, access control, and monitoring.

Maturity depends on understanding workforce needs, aligning teams, and designing for experience, not just deploying tools. To understand where your organizations digital workplace maturity is, take the workplace maturity assessment from Gartner, available here: https://surveys.gartner.com/s/DigitalWorkplaceMaturity?

It refers to employees using AI tools outside approved systems, often without oversight.

Restrictions tend to increase risk by driving usage underground, creating shadow IT. A better approach is governed enablement.

The main barriers are trust, communication, and lack of clarity around how AI impacts employees.

Begin with a detailed assessment of the current print environment, including infrastructure, costs, risks, and user needs. From there, align stakeholders and evaluate solution options that fit broader cloud and security goals.

IT should lead it, but security, risk, procurement, operations, and business stakeholders all need to be involved for the effort to succeed.

Usually not. Different teams may need different capabilities. A modern print strategy often works best when it supports both standardization and flexibility.

Pull printing allows users to send a job and release it later at a printer after authenticating, often with a badge. This helps improve security and gives users more flexibility.

It depends on organizational size and complexity. In large enterprises, planning, vendor evaluation, and phased deployment can take multiple years.

U.S. Bank reduced its printer fleet by 40 percent, cut 6 million printed pages in the first year, later reduced printing by 18 million pages year over year, and improved visibility, security, and operational efficiency.

Because print often remains a critical business service. When it is left on legacy infrastructure, it can create security gaps, increase support overhead, and slow broader modernization efforts.

Cloud solutions deliver secure, consistent printing experiences across locations, enabling employees to print from anywhere without compromising security or usability.

Pharos Direct Print enables employees to print securely using IPP, reducing reliance on print servers and minimizing potential vulnerabilities.

Pharos Cloud is built API-first and cloud-native. It enables real-time scaling, cloud-to-cloud communication, and programmatic access to print data and actions, making it ready for AI and agentic AI integration.

APIs enable both access to rich operational data and the ability to take action. Agentic AI requires both capabilities to function effectively.

Print touches a large percentage of enterprise users daily. If it remains on legacy infrastructure, it cannot participate in AI-driven workflows or support agentic AI initiatives.

Cloud-hosted systems are often legacy systems moved into the cloud. Cloud-native systems are designed specifically for cloud environments and support dynamic scaling, resilience, and real-time communication.

Because agentic AI acts autonomously, it must respond to what is happening now. Periodic or delayed data ingestion limits its effectiveness.

Agentic AI refers to AI systems that can monitor data and take action independently, rather than simply analyzing information when prompted.

When implemented using identity based controls and risk based policies, print DLP reduces risk without forcing major workflow changes.

Yes. Without logging, organizations cannot reconstruct print related exposure during investigations or audits.

A control that requires user authentication at the printer before documents are produced, preventing unattended output.

Endpoint DLP may detect certain print actions, but it typically lacks full visibility, content inspection, and enforcement at the point of physical release.

Because it converts controlled digital information into uncontrolled physical paper, removing identity, encryption, and logging protections.

Our advanced IPP class driver is a truly universal driver that works across thousands of devices, eliminating the need for model-specific drivers and simplifying print management.

Pharos Cloud centralizes driver management and enables admins to manage print drivers in a single location and control user/group access to print queues. Pharos Cloud comes pre-loaded with manufacturers’ universal print drivers and our own universal print driver built on the IPP Everywhere standard. Pharos Cloud also allows administrators to upload Windows drivers into Pharos Cloud.

Pharos’ advanced IPP class driver supports printing the multivendor print fleet enabling Admins to reduce the number of print drivers that need to be managed.

Pharos Direct Print also lets IT staff automatically add and remove print queues on user workstations based on the user’s location and permissions. This makes it easier for employees to print to nearby printers without having to map to printers, helping reduce a common source of Help Desk calls.

As organizations become increasingly global, protecting data and complying with local data privacy requirements is naturally of greater concern.

Pharos Cloud’s Data Privacy and Regional Storage capability provides more than 20 pre-created regions that correlate to existing secure AWS S3 repositories globally. This allows your organization’s Pharos Cloud administrators to:

• Set job storage policy (where print jobs are stored in the cloud between job submission and release) by region—users secure release jobs are stored securely in the cloud in their region
• Create and configure data collection policy (Collect, Do Not Collect, or Collect and Hide) print job information (i.e., document name, employee ID, etc.) by region for use in Pharos Insights

Pharos Cloud supports Zero Trust security printing by ensuring authentication, encryption, and secure release of print jobs, protecting sensitive information at every stage.

There’s a reason why some of the largest organizations in the world trust cloud solutions. Pharos Cloud uses advanced security protocols to protect data, users, and devices.

Yes. Modern multifunction printers run operating systems and should be treated like endpoints, requiring the same security controls, monitoring, and updates.

Identity-based secure release provides very high-risk reduction with low operational friction.

They can be, but they concentrate risk into a single critical system. Proper planning for redundancy and availability is essential. 

Risk exists at submission, storage, and output stages. However, unattended physical output in shared spaces is often the highest and hardest-to-control risk. 

Ownership fragmentation and the perception that printers are low-risk peripherals lead to their exclusion. Systems without clear accountability are often overlooked in hardening and patching processes. 

Trying to start with policy enforcement or secure release without first understanding the environment. When strategy begins with analytics and a better print experience, the later security steps feel like an upgrade, not a punishment.

Not if the experience is reliable and the reason is clear. If secure release is positioned as protection and waste reduction, and authentication is easy, adoption is typically strong. Begin the conversation with ‘IT friendlies’ who are open to embracing change and will champion new technologies within the company. Starting with high-risk areas also makes the value obvious.

Not necessarily. Many improvements come from better management, standardization, and workflow changes. Analytics can help you determine where device changes matter and where they do not.

You can often identify quick wins within the first few weeks of analytics. Direct print improvements and secure release benefits depend on rollout scope, but most organizations see noticeable impact in reliability, support reduction, and waste reduction soon after deployment begins.

Start with analytics. Many organizations underestimate print cost and risk because the environment is fragmented across departments and locations. Data typically reveals device redundancy, costly color printing, inconsistent user experiences, and security gaps.

A print strategy is a structured plan for how your organization manages printing, including cost control, device footprint, user experience, security, and governance. A strong strategy is based on data and aligns with business needs, not assumptions.

IT leaders should focus on modernizing core infrastructure, reducing tech debt, improving integration, and adopting AI-driven observability and automation. At the same time, they must address cost pressures, strengthen protection through layered security approaches, and elevate digital experience as a strategic priority.

Modern environments generate more telemetry data than humans can realistically analyze. AI is required to continuously analyze logs, metrics, and events, detect anomalies, and trigger actions automatically. Without AI, organizations remain reactive and risk missing early warning signs.

Tech debt slows organizations down by making systems harder to automate, integrate, and scale. If a process cannot be automated, it becomes a bottleneck. A bottleneck limits progress regardless of added capacity, much like upgrading a boat’s engine won’t help if the anchor remains in the water. Reducing tech debt is critical for enabling agentic AI, improving efficiency, and meeting growing business expectations.

Agentic AI refers to systems that can take initiative by making decisions, triggering actions, and coordinating workflows without constant human input. It matters because it will fundamentally change IT operations, pushing organizations toward cloud-native architectures, automation, and event-driven systems.

Gartner positioned AI in the hype stage because adoption and expectations are moving faster than proven, repeatable outcomes. However, this does not mean organizations should wait. It means leaders should focus now on building strong foundations so AI can deliver value as it matures.

Companies typically see IT overhead reduction, lower infrastructure costs, stronger compliance, improved employee experience, and printing that “just works”.

Yes. Secure printing features like encryption, authentication, and controlled release help ensure that documents are protected throughout the printing process.

Cloud solutions deliver secure, consistent print access across remote offices and mobile devices, reducing the need for VPNs or local infrastructure.

Because traditional print relies on print servers and complex drivers, IT teams are constantly firefighting issues instead of focusing on strategy.

Not at all. Modern cloud print solutions are designed for streamlined implementation and can integrate into existing infrastructure. Migration can often be completed in phases with minimal disruption.

Absolutely. Cloud platforms provide real-time visibility into print activity, helping organizations identify waste, enforce policies, and optimize usage to reduce overall costs.

Yes. Cloud printing eliminates the need for on-premises infrastructure, reduces driver management, simplifies administration, freeing up IT resources.

Agents and field adjusters can securely send jobs from any device or location and release them only when they arrive at an authorized printer. This improves productivity while protecting sensitive claim or policyholder information.

Cloud platforms allow insurers to control where print jobs are stored, how long they are retained, and who has access to them. This helps meet requirements under HIPAA, GLBA, NAIC Model Law 668, GDPR, CPRA, and other data regulations.

Yes. Cloud print management platforms use encrypted data transmission, user authentication, zero trust principles, and centralized access controls. These features help ensure that printed documents are protected from unauthorized access.

Insurance organizations handle highly sensitive data and must meet strict compliance requirements. Legacy print systems often lack the security, visibility, and flexibility needed to protect information and support today’s hybrid workforce. Cloud printing provides stronger security, easier management, and improved efficiency.

Customers reduce server maintenance, improve uptime, gain real time visibility, and ease the workload on IT teams. Many also integrate printing into broader IT workflows for a more streamlined and reliable print operation.

Delaying modernization increases exposure to security issues, compliance gaps, and infrastructure failures caused by outdated servers or device upgrades. The biggest risk is being forced into a rushed migration without the time to plan properly.

Printing often operates behind the scenes, which makes it easy to overlook. Many organizations still rely on aging servers and legacy protocols that were never designed for modern security requirements. This creates vulnerabilities that do not show up until something goes wrong.

Key changes are converging. Hybrid work, rising compliance expectations, and the shift toward Windows Protected Print Mode are reshaping how printing must function. Organizations that wait may face forced, reactive changes later.

Start by modernizing your print environment with cloud print management. Eliminate servers, standardize driverless printing, and integrate with your identity provider. These steps establish the architecture PrintOps builds upon.

PrintOps is the modern, integrated, people-centric, and cloud-native approach to printing and its supporting infrastructure and operations. PrintOps delivers a user-focused, integrated solution that empowers organizations to manage costs, enhance security, improve agility, and make data-driven decisions through delivering insights, analytics, and infrastructure modernization capabilities. It extends cloud print management into an enterprise control plane, integrating print with identity, policy, observability, and IT operations. Think of cloud print management as the foundation and PrintOps as the full operating model built on top.

Enterprises benefit from centralized visibility, policy enforcement, and seamless integration with directory and security systems. It reduces cost and complexity while meeting compliance and scalability requirements.

Yes. Modern cloud print platforms like Pharos Cloud are built with Zero Trust principles—using identity-based access, encryption, and driverless workflows to reduce attack surface and protect data end-to-end.

Traditional print management depends more on local servers and manual administration. Cloud print management shifts control to a cloud-native platform that simplifies infrastructure, improves visibility, and supports a better user experience.

Cloud print management centralizes printing in the cloud, eliminating on-premises print servers and manual configuration. It lets IT manage queues, policies, and security from a single platform, supporting users wherever they work.

Pharos offers enterprise-grade cloud print management designed for compliance-driven industries, combining data protection, centralized analytics, and support for Zero Trust principles in a secure platform.

Yes. Pharos customers have saved millions in printing costs and gained measurable efficiency improvements.

The secure Pharos Cloud platform supports Zero Trust security principles, end-to-end encryption, secure release workflows that require user authentication to release print jobs, and helps organizations adhere to local data privacy requirements with the ability to configure data collection settings and store print jobs securely in the cloud in users’ region.

Well-designed cloud platforms enable global organizations to adhere to local data privacy requirements by configuring data collection settings by region and storing print jobs securely in the cloud in the users’ region.

Yes. Cloud print management platforms eliminate the need for vulnerable print servers, support zero trust principles, end-to-end encryption, and secure print workflows that enhance document security.

Well–designed cloud platforms secure data through end-to-end encryption, provide audit trails, and support local data privacy collection requirements

Absolutely. Pharos solutions are built to align with Zero-Trust principles and integrate seamlessly with identity and access management systems.

Cloud-native print management reduces reliance on legacy print servers while supporting secure authentication, encrypted communications, centralized policy management, Secure Release Printing, and comprehensive audit trails. These capabilities help organizations better protect sensitive patient information.

Secure printing requires users to authenticate at the device before documents are released, ensuring sensitive files do not sit unattended in print trays.

Yes. Printers process and store sensitive data, making them a target for attackers. Without controls, they expose organizations to compliance and security risks.

Pharos solutions encrypt data and authenticate users—helping insurers achieve a secure, compliant, and cost-effective print environment.

Common risks include uncollected print jobs, unsecured printers, and devices storing cached data. Each creates potential exposure for policyholder information.

Insurance companies handle highly sensitive data. Secure print management ensures that every printed document is protected from unauthorized access, aligning with compliance requirements and customer expectations.

Yes. Pharos Cloud supports printing to just about any networked printer regardless of vendor.

Print servers add cost, complexity, and security risks. A cloud-based solution eliminates those issues while improving reliability.

It combines the simplicity of direct printing with centralized management in the cloud, making it scalable, secure, and easy to manage across multiple sites.

Direct IP printing sends jobs directly from a user’s device to a printer using its IP address, eliminating the need for print servers.

Implementation is simplified. A Device Scout is deployed on an app server for fleet discovery and analytics. Once set up, dashboards provide insights status. 

It estimates environmental impact and can enforce eco-friendly printing behavior across your fleet. 

By uncovering usage trends, consolidating underused devices, and reducing unnecessary printing, organizations can significantly lower print-related expenses.

Yes. Pharos Cloud supports mixed fleets. 

It is the cloud-based control and oversight of all printers in your environment, including discovery, monitoring, analytics, and policy enforcement.

Well-designed cloud solutions like Pharos can reduce paper waste, optimize device usage, and eliminate on-prem servers to reduce energy consumption.

Highly regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and government face the greatest compliance and security risks.

Yes. By eliminating print servers, reducing hardware reliance, and increasing efficiency, enterprises typically see significant cost savings.

A print management platform like Pharos provides data and reporting across the enterprise.

IT support and time spent managing print are often overlooked.

Printing contributes to paper waste, energy consumption, and emissions. Tracking and optimizing printers and usage directly supports ESG initiatives.

Less time spent troubleshooting printers means IT teams can focus on strategic projects instead of responding to day-to-day print issues.

Yes, when properly deployed. Well-designed cloud solutions eliminate the vulnerabilities of legacy servers, support Zero Trust security principles, and support end-to-end data encryption and secure print workflows to help secure the print environment.

Organizations regularly report reductions of 30–40% in printing costs when leveraging the insights gleamed from the analytics of a modern print management system.

Unmanaged print fleets are costly, insecure, and wasteful. A strategy reduces risk and saves money.

Advanced reporting tools provide breakdowns by user, department, and device, making cost allocation and accountability easier.

Color toner and ink are significantly more costly per page. Defaulting to black-and-white can dramatically reduce expenses.

Secure pull printing holds print jobs until the user authenticates at the device. This helps reduce abandoned print jobs and improve document security.

Most enterprises see 20–40 percent savings in print costs by eliminating print servers and simplifying IT support.

Yes. A well-designed print management platform can reduce print volumes, waste, energy use, and help support sustainability goals through policy enforcement (e.g., duplex defaults), secure release workflows, and server elimination.

It ensures that only authorized users can print, encrypts data in transit, helps comply with data privacy requirements, and reduces the risk of sensitive documents being lost or exposed.

Some do, depending on requirements, but many are moving to cloud-based models that reduce infrastructure and simplify printing for employees, especially remote, hybrid, and mobile workers.

Legacy setups with scattered servers and drivers are expensive to maintain, costly to scale, and vulnerable to security risks.

Print management is the way organizations control, secure, and optimize printing across users, devices, locations, and workflows.

CIOs typically lead strategy, with collaboration from security, compliance, and IT operations teams.

Cloud print management can reduce costs by simplifying infrastructure, reducing print-server overhead, improving visibility into usage, enforcing smarter policies, and helping IT support printing more efficiently.

Timelines vary based on the number of locations and devices, but cloud solutions can often be rolled out incrementally, often while leaving existing infrastructure in place to ensure continuous availability during an implementation. This is where the right migration strategy and tools are essential.

Leading providers offer region-based data controls, allowing institutions to comply with international and regional data privacy regulations.

Yes. Modern cloud print platforms offer encryption, access control, and secure release printing, aligning with banking security standards.

Yes, the ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 Type II attested Pharos Cloud supports end-to-end encryption, secure print workflows, and Zero Trust principles to enhance print security.

Savings vary by organization, but clients often see reductions in infrastructure costs, printing costs, and IT labor hours.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is vendor-agnostic, meaning it works across and supports just about all printer brands and models available today.

By eliminating on-premises servers, cloud print management platforms lower energy use and cooling requirements. Features like secure print release and duplex defaults reduce consumption of consumables.

Not with the right solution. Pharos Cloud supports zero trust security principles without impacting print workflows, enhancing security while providing an intuitive print experience that doesn’t add unnecessary complexity.

Pharos was built to support secure, serverless printing and supports the tenets of zero trust to enable printing in a mature zero trust environment by:

• Treating both the workstation and printer as resources to be secured and validated​
• Verifying both user and print device identity on a per-session basis​
• Acting as policy enforcement point to securely deliver jobs to printer—doesn’t rely on the Windows print spooler for job delivery​
• Delivering print jobs over IPPS to ensure end-to-end encryption of all communications ​
• Adapting to changes in a dynamic security policy via SCIM 2.0 and APIs

Printing is often treated as basic office infrastructure rather than a security-relevant workflow. Many organizations still rely on legacy print servers, older protocols, and shared devices that are not governed with the same rigor as other endpoints.

Zero Trust printing applies the ‘never trust, always verify’ model to users, devices, print jobs, printers, and print infrastructure. It requires verification and policy enforcement before print access is allowed.

With the right partner, migration can be phased and strategic, minimizing disruption and aligning with your institution’s broader IT goals.

Leading cloud print platforms help meet banking compliance standards with encryption, audit trails, and configurable data collection settings.

Cloud solutions eliminate the need for local print servers, reduce IT workload, and provide tools for monitoring and controlling print usage.

While the hardware may not seem costly, associated expenses like licensing, maintenance, support, and risk mitigation add up quickly across multiple branches.

Pharos solutions modernize print infrastructure, reduce risk, and lower costs with secure cloud-native, ISO 27001 certified and SOC 2 Type II attested platform that supports Zero Trust security principles.

Two common risks are data leaks from unclaimed print jobs and attackers exploiting printers as an entry point into the network.

Start with an audit: review firmware, access controls, print policies, device placement, and print logs. Many organizations discover gaps they weren’t aware of.

Industries must comply with data privacy requirements like HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, and SOX. Printers that process sensitive data are subject to the same rules as other IT systems.

A Zero Trust approach assumes that bad actors are already inside the corporate network. Print management platforms supporting Zero Trust principles must:

• Treat both workstations and printers as resources to be secured and validated
• Verify both user and print device identity on a per-session basis
• Act as policy enforcement point to securely deliver jobs to printer—doesn’t rely on the Windows print spooler for job delivery
• Deliver print jobs over IPPS to ensure end-to-end encryption of all communications 
• Adapt to changes in a dynamic security policy via SCIM 2.0 and APIs

Yes, well-designed cloud solutions not only eliminate print servers as an attack surface, they are designed to support the latest security standards and frameworks to protect print data as well as the print infrastructure  so organizations can concentrate on more strategic initiatives.

Yes. Printers are networked computers. Attackers can exploit vulnerabilities to steal data, access the network, or access sensitive information left unattended at print devices.

Cloud print management centralizes oversight, applies consistent policies across branches, removes the need for local print servers, and enhances security by supporting Zero Trust security principles.

Secure release printing holds a print job until an authorized user authenticates and releases it at an approved printer.

GLBA, FFIEC, PCI DSS, GDPR, and others all apply. If a printer stores or transmits customer data, it must be secured to regulatory standards.

Yes. While they may seem innocuous, many printers store sensitive data, connect to core systems, and are often unsecured. That makes them an attractive entry point for cybercriminals.

Pharos Cloud is ISO 27001-certified and SOC 2 Type II attested, encrypts data at rest and in transit, and supports Zero Trust security principles. This provides the robust security foundations required by regulated industries and enables secure release workflows to protect sensitive documents.

Modern print management software, particularly cloud-native platforms like Pharos Cloud, remove print servers and surface actionable insights through analytics. Pharos Cloud helps organizations track print usage, cut hardware, energy, and support costs while optimizing print behavior across the organization.

Yes. Pharos Cloud is vendor-agnostic and includes a universal driver built on the IPP Everywhere standard that supports most printers on the market today. Admins can also upload manufacturer-specific drivers if needed.

Enterprise print management software helps large organizations centrally manage printers, users, queues, drivers, print jobs, policies, reporting, and document-security workflows.

Cloud printing solutions provide real-time visibility into print usage, allowing organizations to identify inefficiencies and optimize print resources. Educating employees about printing habits and centralizing monitoring can lead to significant cost savings and support sustainability goals.

Migrating to cloud printing reduces the IT workload by eliminating the need for on-premises servers and automating routine maintenance tasks. This allows IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives and reduces the need for manual intervention.

Cloud print management platforms provide centralized control over where print jobs are stored and how personal data is handled. Administrators can set region-specific policies to ensure compliance with local data privacy regulations.

Yes, cloud printing solutions are designed to support hybrid and mobile workforces by enabling secure printing from any device and location. Employees can send print jobs remotely and retrieve them from secure printers at their convenience.

Cloud printing enhances security through measures like end-to-end encryption, identity and access management (IAM), and the zero trust security model. These features ensure that print jobs are securely transmitted and accessed only by authorized users.

Less time managing servers and drivers, lower operating costs, stronger security, better user experience, and faster onboarding of new sites or hybrid users—all with full visibility from a single cloud console.

Pharos Cloud is a cloud-native PrintOps platform that centralizes control at enterprise scale. It combines Direct IP printing, Secure Release, a universal driver for multi-vendor fleets, near real-time Pharos Insights, policy controls, and regional data privacy for global compliance.

By eliminating print servers, organizations reduce attack surfaces linked to spooler vulnerabilities and unsecured ports. Jobs are encrypted, user access is controlled, and secure release prevents sensitive documents from sitting unattended.

Legacy print servers create overhead, escalating costs, and security and compliance gaps. As hybrid work expands, maintaining distributed servers and drivers is harder to justify compared to modern, cloud-managed alternatives.

Serverless printing is a print architecture that removes dedicated on-premises print servers from the workflow. Print jobs can be sent directly to printers through direct IP printing, while cloud-based management handles policies, users, drivers, and reporting.

Yes, by eliminating the need for dedicated print servers and simplifying the print infrastructure, Pharos Mobile Print helps organizations cut operational costs while enhancing the efficiency of the printing process.

Pharos Mobile Print is quick to deploy and eliminates the complexities associated with traditional print setups. The user-friendly setup wizard allows IT admins to empower users to register themselves, reducing the need for extensive IT involvement and accelerating the deployment of secure print services.

Yes, Pharos Mobile Print is designed to work with printers from multiple manufacturers, making it a versatile cloud print solution for any organization. Whether you have networked printers connected via Wi-Fi or traditional wired setups, the printing feature is supported across your entire print infrastructure.

Pharos Mobile Print supports a wide range of devices, including iOS devices, Android smartphones, and laptops. Users can easily submit print jobs through a secure portal. The solution is compatible with various operating systems, ensuring broad accessibility.

Pharos Mobile Print enhances security by offering advanced authentication and secure release features. Users can easily print documents from a mobile device, like an iOS device, Android smartphone, or laptop, with each print job held securely until released by the authorized user. The solution integrates seamlessly with your existing print infrastructure and can also be configured with an MDM system for additional control.

Pharos Mobile Print is a secure printing solution that allows users to print directly from their mobile app or any other BYOD device, such as a laptop or smartphone, to any network printer within your organization. This cloud print service supports mixed print infrastructure environments and makes managing the entire printing process easy.

Pharos Direct Print provides users with the direct ability to print to networked devices using IPP, eliminating the need for print servers and simplifying print infrastructure.

Admins can either lock down or enable access to all Lexmark MFD functionality, but not lock down individual applications such as copy, scan, or fax.

View supported devices

Pharos Cloud (Beacon), Blueprint, Uniprint

Admins can either lock down or enable access to all Sharp MFD functionality, but not lock down individual applications such as copy, scan, or fax.

View supported devices

Uniprint solutions support Sharp devices.

Admins can either lock down or enable access to all Toshiba MFD functionality, but not lock down individual applications such as copy, scan, or fax.

View supported devices

Pharos Cloud (Beacon), Blueprint, Uniprint

Admins can either lock down or enable access to all Xerox MFD functionality, but not lock down individual applications such as copy, scan, or fax.

View supported devices

Pharos Cloud (Beacon), Blueprint, Uniprint

Admins can either lock down or enable access to all Ricoh MFD functionality, but not lock down individual applications such as copy, scan, or fax.

View supported devices

Pharos Cloud, Blueprint, Uniprint

Admins have the ability to enable public access to Copy and Scan capabilities on KM MFDs.

View supported devices

Pharos Cloud (Beacon), Blueprint, and Uniprint all support Konica Minolta devices

HP Secure Print is the white-labeled version of Pharos Secure Release developed by Pharos and sold by HP.

Yes, Admins can lock down or enable individual functions to authenticated users such as Copy, Scan, or Fax on HP

View supported devices

• Pharos Cloud (Beacon)
• Blueprint
• Uniprint
• All support HP devices

Admins can either lock down or enable access to all Canon MFD functionality, but not lock down individual applications such as copy, scan, or fax.

View supported devices

Pharos Cloud, Blueprint, and Uniprint all support Canon devices.

• Easily identify verified solutions. The Chrome Enterprise Recommended badge tells customers that the app runs great on Chrome OS and Chrome browsers – with the assurance they’ll be supported by Google.
• Reduce risk of compatibility issues or breaks. Partners have gone through extensive testing, so IT teams know they can trust technologies like Pharos Chrome Print and Pharos Cloud.
• Shorten testing cycles for apps in your environment. Google does the heavy lifting on product testing so that customers can focus on testing specific to their environment.
• Simplify the change management process by choosing a solution verified by Google. With Chrome Enterprise Recommended verified solutions, IT teams can show value and build a case for increased adoption.

• Risk of downtime to business as usual. IT teams need new technology that won’t result in lost productivity or delayed implementation across the business.
• Compatibility issues with existing apps and systems. Introducing a new technology that’s incompatible with current investments can cause huge headaches.
• Risk of productivity impact from investment in new tech. Piloting new technologies and troubleshooting ongoing issues that arise is time-consuming.
• Resistance to change from within an organization. If users have a poor experience with a new technology, it can make it difficult to move adoption forward.

Yes! Check it out here:

Touchless printing reduces the risk posed by high-touch surfaces and enables users to release documents at the printer without touching the device. This is done either by using a mobile app to scan a QR code or swiping a proximity card to release the submitted print job.

Yes, you can access all the metrics you need through Pharos Insights, which provides detailed reporting and analytics on print usage.

Using the Pharos Secure Release mobile app from an Android or iOS device allows users to submit documents to a remote printer, then securely release them once they’re needed. Just click the Print button on your device from any remote location, and when you’re ready, go to the printer to collect your documents. In addition, mobile devices can be used to release Secure Release print jobs at a device via QR code scan.

Pharos Cloud only collects job metadata approved by the administrator, and all data is encrypted. In addition, Pharos Cloud’s licensable Data Privacy and Regional Document Storage capability helps global organizations adhere to local data privacy and data sovereignty requirements by providing 21 different global regions where Administrators can control 1) what print job information is collected for reporting purposes and 2) where Secure Release print jobs are stored in the cloud at rest.

Pharos Cloud enables employees to print securely by eliminating print server vulnerabilities from the equation, securing data with end-to-end encryption, and supporting zero trust security principles.

In addition, Pharos Secure Release enhances document security by requiring authentication at a device in order to release print jobs—preventing sensitive documents from being left unattended.

Print jobs are securely stored in the cloud until the user releases them at a device, ensuring documents are protected and only printed when needed.

Pharos Direct Print provides a consistent user experience across all Windows, Mac, and Chrome OS devices and supports all IPP printers, regardless of manufacturer. This means less user frustration and drastic reductions in Help Desk time. 

In addition to your Pharos Cloud account, you need a Microsoft 365 account connected to Microsoft Entra ID.

Use both when Universal Print provides the Microsoft cloud print foundation you want, and your organization needs complementary enterprise capabilities from Pharos Cloud. Common reasons include pull printing when not every employee can rely on mobile QR release, print analytics for managing costs, flexible authentication methods, support for iOS printing, and consistent secure release workflows across complex environments.

Pharos Cloud creates a single virtual printer inside Universal Print. Users print to that shared printer object, then walk to a Pharos-enabled printer. Depending on the organization’s configuration, users can authenticate with a card reader or badge, a mobile device for QR code release, or keyboard login credentials such as a passcode or PIN before releasing their documents.

Yes. To use Microsoft Universal Print, users need a Microsoft 365 account connected to Microsoft Entra ID. The Pharos Cloud integration can leverage that Microsoft identity as part of the print workflow.

The current integration supports Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise 1903 or later. Confirm current Microsoft and Pharos support requirements before publication or implementation.

Yes. Microsoft Universal Print supports Windows and macOS. Pharos Cloud extends support for additional environments and workflows, including Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and iOS devices such as iPhone and iPad.

Universal Print is designed to reduce traditional print driver management. Pharos Cloud complements that foundation by helping organizations provide consistent print and release workflows across supported devices, locations, and user groups.

Some newer printers natively support Universal Print. For existing printers that do not have the required firmware, Microsoft provides a connector that connects printers to the Microsoft 365 cloud. Pharos Cloud also supports mixed printer fleets, helping organizations manage secure release workflows across printer manufacturers and device models.

No. Universal Print is an option Pharos customers can use as part of their Microsoft 365 environment. If your current Pharos deployment is meeting your needs, you do not need to change your print environment simply because Universal Print is available. Pharos can help you evaluate whether an integration with Universal Print makes sense for your cloud print strategy.

No. Pharos Chrome Print does not rely on Google Cloud Print, so the extension works today and will work after Google decommissions Google Cloud Print on December 31.

As the screenshot above shows, the Secure Printer will be automatically installed when the Pharos Chrome Print extension is configured with your company URL.

You’ll see it in your list of Chrome extensions. Click the puzzle piece icon to open the list. You can pin any Chrome extension to the top of your Chrome browser.

You’ll see a green checkmark on the Pharos Chrome Print extension when the company URL is set and the employee is signed in.

Yes. The email invite is a template. You can invite yourself, update the email message, and then distribute to your employees.

No. Pharos Chrome Print will use your company’s OpenID provider for user authentication. Popular OpenID providers include Azure AD (Microsoft 365), Google, Okta, and Ping Identity.

Yes! As an IT admin, you can distribute the extension pre-configured via your Google Administration console.

No. You can deploy a fully configured Pharos Chrome Print extension to your employees that includes your company configuration URL. Employees simply log in using their company credentials to start using Pharos Chrome Print.

The Pharos Chrome Print extension works with any Pharos-secured printer, and you can release your documents as you normally would.

Yes! Pharos Chrome Print works on Chrome OS devices, and it also works with the Chrome browser on other OS systems like Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Universal Print is designed to reduce traditional print driver management. Pharos Cloud complements that foundation by helping organizations provide consistent print and release workflows across supported devices, locations, and user groups.

Nothing – it’s a free extension that enables printing from Chromebooks into any Pharos print management system.

Yes. Google is shutting down the Google Cloud Print service in 2021. This simple extension allows our customers to continue to support printing from Chromebooks.

Not at all. Once in Pharos Cloud, enabling a printer for direct print is quick and straightforward, reducing setup time and IT effort.

Pharos’ advanced IPP driver supports thousands of printer models and provides your employees with a consistent print experience to your multi-vendor fleet to reduce user training and Help Desk troubleshooting time.

Pharos Direct Print uses secure IPP printing and eliminates the need for print servers, reducing the attack surface and helping protect sensitive data in transit.

For Direct IP printing on the company network where there is direct line of sight to the printer, Direct Print jobs don’t go to the cloud. Instead, they’re sent directly to the printer via IPPS/IPP. Only job metadata is collected, encrypted, and sent to Pharos Cloud for analytics. For Direct Printing via cloud (requires Secure Release license), the print job and its metadata are primarily in transit through the cloud. However, there are brief moments when the print job is at rest. During this time, Pharos Cloud will temporarily store the print job in the user’s configured region. Print jobs are securely handled using temporary cloud storage, where they are automatically deleted after printing to minimize data exposure. The use of Zero Knowledge Encryption and secure services in Pharos Cloud ensures that even during these brief moments, the data remains protected.

Pharos Direct Print provides a consistent user experience across all Windows, Mac, and Chrome OS devices, and supports all IPP printers, regardless of manufacturer.

Managing traditional print infrastructure is time- consuming and costly. With Pharos Direct Print, you can eliminate print servers, simplify print driver deployment and management, and reduce printing costs—all while enabling employees to print in a secure an familiar way to your existing printer fleet.

If a job gets left in the queue, it is automatically deleted after an admin-set period of time.

Yes. Because Pharos Release works in a cloud print environment, it can support a variety of devices and operating systems. This means iOS, Android, and other operating systems can be used to submit print jobs. Employees can initiate the printing process from wherever they are—at or away from their desks. Mobile devices can also be used to release print jobs via QR code scan.

Pharos provides a consistent and intuitive printing experience across platforms to a multi-vendor fleet, reducing user training, user frustration, and troubleshooting vectors for the Help Desk.

Pharos’ truly “universal” print driver simplifies driver management by reducing the number of drivers administrators have to manage. Built on the IPP Everywhere standard, Pharos advanced driver supports thousands of printer models—from low-volume, single-function printers to high-volume, multifunction devices across all manufacturers.

Printed pages left unattended at the printer introduce risk if sensitive information gets into the wrong hands. In addition to preventing data from being exposed, Pharos Secure Release: 

• Eliminates print servers from the equation, removing an attack surface that hackers could use to disseminate malware
• Secures data with end-to-end encryption
• Supports zero trust security principles

Pharos Cloud’s Secure Release workflow temporarily stores a copy of a print job in the cloud if the cloud backup option is enabled. This allows the job to be released even if the originating workstation is offline or does not have a network line of sight to the printer by routing it through another available Print Scout. 

Organizations can prevent print jobs from being stored in the cloud by not enabling cloud backup. In this case, however, the user will not be able to release the job if the originating workstation is offline or does not have a network line of sight to the printer.

The document will always be stored in the Pharos Cloud for non-Print Scout submissions (iOS, iPadOS, Android, Chrome OS, and Linux).

Pharos Cloud’s licensable Data Privacy and Regional Document Storage capability helps global organizations adhere to local data privacy and data sovereignty requirements by providing more than 20 pre-defined global regions correlating to secure AWS S3 repositories globally where Administrators can control: 

1) what print job information is collected for reporting purposes, and 

2) where Secure Release print jobs are stored in the cloud at rest

Managing traditional print infrastructure is time-consuming and costly. With Pharos Cloud Secure Release, you can:

• Eliminate print servers and their potential vulnerabilities.
• Simplify print driver management with Pharos’ truly “universal” driver, built on the IPP Everywhere standard, which supports most devices.
• Enhance document security by preventing sensitive documents from being left unattended at the printer.
• Reduce waste, as well as the cost of managing your print infrastructure.

You can start collecting data within an hour, giving you quick access to valuable, actionable metrics.

Yes, admins have the ability to choose the user data they collect by region (document name, user name, department, etc).

Our customers have achieved up to 45% cost savings on their printing costs with the help of Pharos Insights. Some of the biggest savings has been reducing color print volumes.

Yes, you can create custom views in Pharos Insights, which enables you to decide which data you want to surface according to what’s most relevant. You can also organize data to match your workflow, making it easier to manage and intuitive.