Let’s face it, modern printing can look like an architectural mess. You’ve got legacy drivers, sprawling print servers, incompatible devices, security systems, and cloud services all layered over crusty, old infrastructure that hasn’t changed in years.
This didn’t happen because print was badly designed. In fact, each generation of change solved a real organizational problem.
It’s just that the changes built up, like barnacles on a ship, to the point where the whole thing became increasingly difficult to maintain and secure. Which is why it may feel like your print stack has changed so dramatically overnight (or stopped working altogether).
To figure out how we got here, you have to go back and understand the last 40 years of workplace printing. Not as a series of mistakes, but more like a series of solutions that somehow turned into a mistake (cue flashback harp music).
From local printers to shared infrastructure
In the 1980s and 1990s, desktop printing was pretty straightforward. An organization managed its computers, installed a manufacturer-specific driver, and connected a printer with a (usually very dusty) parallel cable. The driver knew how to communicate with that device and expose its capabilities to the operating system. So far, so good.
This close integration made sense. Drivers could be optimized for specific hardware, delivering reliable output and all the features users needed. The trade-off was kind of invisible: drivers also operated deep within the operating system, with substantial privileges. (Remember this bit, it’s important.)
As offices grew, printing moved onto networks. So rather than connecting every printer to every computer, organizations could share devices across whole departments and even floors. Print servers brought print queues, drivers, permissions, and configuration under central control.
This was a huge improvement for IT teams managing larger fleets. But centralization also created dependencies. Every additional printer model, queue, and server added another dependency that had to be maintained. Infrastructure became more manageable at scale (good), while also becoming more interconnected and dependent on its fiddly component bits (less good).
More devices, more drivers, more dependencies
During the 2000s, printer manufacturers expanded their product range, operating systems evolved, and users expected way more from their devices.
Proprietary drivers supported increasingly sophisticated functions, from stapling and hole punching to specialized finishing options. These weren’t unnecessary complications – they delivered device-specific features people genuinely wanted – but the problem was that they worked too well.
The driver model, when it was working, disappeared into the background, so organizations had little incentive to replace a functioning printer, or update a driver, or redesign a print server.
And so legacy print infrastructure just kind of…coasted. Sometimes for decades, gathering driver gremlins alongside the dust, while other business systems modernized and moved to the cloud.
Then the workplace changed again. During the 2010s, Macs, Chromebooks, personal laptops, and mobile devices were suddenly everywhere. The assumption that every employee used a centrally managed Windows PC didn’t apply anymore.
As BYOD became more common, standards-based printing became much more important. Now the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) has been around for years, offering businesses a more universal way for devices and printers to talk to each other.
But newer technologies such as AirPrint, Mopria, and IPP Everywhere made driverless printing available across a much wider range of devices. The trade-off? Not every existing printer, workflow, or vendor-specific feature fitted neatly into the new model.
So organizations basically ended up supporting both approaches at once: newer standards-based printing alongside drivers and infrastructure from the before times (before Instagram, that is).
Cloud printing extended this transition, adding yet another layer on top of an already wobbly, overloaded print cake. As users expected to print from different locations and devices, cloud services offered all sorts of juicy goodness: remote access, centralized management, and the flexibility to work and print from anywhere.
In many organizations, cloud services were added alongside existing infrastructure rather than replacing it outright. And so the cake grew, so the barnacles accumulated, and the metaphors became more and more labored…
The security reckoning
Most of this accumulated mess remained hidden until security assumptions caught up with technology. In 2021, PrintNightmare exposed serious vulnerabilities around the Windows Print Spooler, highlighting the risks associated with third-party printer driver installation (and those aforementioned wide-ranging privileges).
In response, Microsoft released security updates and tightened driver-installation requirements, including making admin privileges the default requirement for installing or updating drivers in relevant scenarios – which helped close the security hole, while opening a fresh can of admin worms.
The bigger question was no longer simply how to patch the existing architecture. Indeed, people began questioning the architecture itself. The question became whether printing should still depend so heavily on third-party drivers running with elevated, God-like privileges.
Since then, Microsoft has shifted away from its driver-based model toward Windows Ready Print (a modern, IPP-based default that reduces reliance on manufacturer drivers) and Windows Protected Print Mode (a stricter security setting that enforces Ready Print and blocks third-party drivers altogether).
Unfortunately, moving forward was not as simple as switching everything off and blowing on a cartridge. Organizations still had fleets of legacy printers built around traditional drivers, and not every older device supported the newer standards, or all the same features.
Some manufacturers had also developed drivers for brand-new ARM-based Windows PCs, which complicated matters even further.
Combine that with Apple announcing their plan to phase out support for Rosetta (a compatibility layer which helped older software continue to run on newer Macs), and you have what the kids today describe as a “hot mess”.
So this is where we find ourselves, in what we’re calling a “transitional period”, which sounds a lot better than “hot mess”, and captures the weird, liminal space a lot of organizations find themselves in. Their traditional print stack feels broken, but they don’t know if they’re ready for whatever comes next.
Building the future while running the past
Let’s not forget, the network itself is changing, too. Traditional printing assumed a relatively trusted corporate network where computers, print servers, and printers could all talk to one another, and getting past the outer moat automatically made you trustworthy.
Zero-trust architectures flip that assumption on its head, favoring tighter, more granular controls over open-slather network access.
This creates opportunities for cloud-managed approaches in which printers retrieve jobs from trusted services, rather than relying on unrestricted communication with local servers. The traditional print server may become less central, but its underlying functions – central management, access control, and the separation of users from devices – remain essential.
Ultimately, today’s print complexity is the accumulated result of decades of totally reasonable, rational decisions, made in response to changing hardware and workplace expectations. Those decisions weren’t wrong, but they created an environment in which security vulnerabilities grew and festered.
The modern move to driverless printing and zero-trust is a reflex against this gradual accretion. It’s a cleaner model but certainly not a clean break with the past, which is probably why it feels so shocking.
The challenge for everyone now is to unwind their old dependencies and embrace the future – without disrupting business as usual.
Good thing we’re here to help.
