According to Y Soft's 2026 State of Print report, the majority of new projects undertaken are now cloud-first: including cloud migration services or immediate cloud deployment. While certain regions already reached a high cloud share ahead of the global tipping point, as of 2025, 64.8% of new deployments worldwide are in the cloud.
Cloud is becoming the norm in businesses. Beyond print infrastructure, organizations host an average of 92% of their IT services in the cloud.
Do you still have a print server collecting dust in the corner while everything else is in the cloud? If you're on a digital transformation journey, and considering moving your print stack to a cloud environment, this post is for you.
Businesses increasingly investigate cloud migration services to modernize IT infrastructure and take advantage of a flexible cloud computing environment. Cloud print infrastructure eliminates the need for on-site servers, data centers, and driver management, while benefiting companies’ security posture, productivity, and IT budget.
In this article, we’ll discuss why moving your print infrastructure is a great IT benefit, with all the key reasons to migrate to cloud today. But first, let's explore how cloud printing works.
Cloud print infrastructure stores documents and information in the cloud and sends them to the nearest printer for printout after a release request. You can print from any networked printer connected to the cloud. Not just the one printer connected to your workstation like in the on-prem world.
With a cloud-powered print fleet, you can print from any networked printer across your organization, including printers on different floors, buildings, even countries. Ultimately, you can print from anywhere that’s convenient for you.
Cloud printing solutions allow you to queue multiple documents to get printed. This won’t affect the printer’s performance or cause it to hang because the cloud can ‘hold’ large volumes of data and print jobs.
When you are ready, you can head to your printer of choice and verify your identity via a QR code, PIN, badge, or print directly if your setup supports push print. Today, the common practice is to adopt pull printing, where no one else can retrieve your print job for you, ramping up document security.
The printer will then process your request(s), all while you stand by the device. This reduces instances of documents getting mixed or forgotten in the print tray, so your data stays in trusted hands.
Do you need specific, product-led reasons to consider connecting your printers to the cloud? Check out these tested and true reasons with SAFEQ Cloud as the example.
📖 Read on → Why Move to the Cloud: 11 Reasons to Get Cloud Connected
Using print infrastructure in the cloud brings numerous advantages. Here are the top seven benefits of cloud printing—and why you should take a closer look at cloud migration services to migrate your printing to the cloud:
Maintaining print servers costs organizations roughly $4,000 per year. With the added refresh cycles, support warranty, OS licensing, and IT administration (maintenance, patching, and updates), running a server setup will cost you roughly $28,500–$69,500 every 5 years.
Administering a print infrastructure on a traditional server platform drains the IT budget of hundreds of dollars per printer. Shifting to cloud print infrastructure will reduce operational and maintenance costs within 12 months.
As businesses grow, so does their printing demand. With cloud-based printing, organizations can save on costs otherwise spent on maintenance, and effectively scale as their business evolves and needs change.
Even more, cloud technology reduces print errors.
Printers, therefore, consume less paper and ink that would otherwise go to waste. Fewer instances of reprints also typically occur because of colleagues accidentally getting the wrong print jobs printed. In the 2026 State of Printing, we learn that 13% of submitted print jobs are never released due to secure print rules available in cloud print platforms that stop unecessary prints.
Lastly, there’s no need for employees to request individual printers for backup. Most teams with print-heavy requirements typically request backup printers in case of office printer breakdown. These costs can add up since individual printers tend to be expensive, not to mention the extra spend on paper and ink.
Cloud print services are subscription-based, so organizations only need to pay based on their consumption (per user, per device, or per license). Overall, it’s a smart, cost-effective way for businesses and organizations to manage print requirements long-term.
An overlooked aspect of office security and compliance is insecure print infrastructure.
61% of large organizations have reportedly experienced at least one data breach due to insecure print practices. 67% of organizations share the concern of hackers gaining access to their IT networks through an unsecured printer device.
Take Windows PrintNightmare vulnerability, for instance. That vulnerability exposed a lot of organizations to security risks. It highlighted a major security threat, with printers being a prime target for hackers.
The problem usually has to do with your system's patch cycle and updatability. Most security attacks exploit a common security blind spot: Outdated systems.
Telemetry data proves that updates often lag in on-prem environments, turning everyday print infrastructure into unnecessary security exposure. With cloud, your system can auto-update in regular cycles, helping you protect your print stack over time without having to schedule or remember security updates.
📖 Read on → The Hidden Print Security Risk: Print Systems Left Unpatched
SAFEQ Cloud addresses security concerns by maintaining board-level resilience and multi-level security. Not only do we constantly monitor our infrastructure, we also have safeguards in place to ensure print security.
With SAFEQ Cloud, the work of keeping your print environment threat-monitored, audit-ready, and compliant doesn't sit with your team, it sits with ours. You inherit the controls, the evidence, and the operational rigor—not the workload. Here’s a rundown of security mechanisms to expect in SAFEQ Cloud:
📖 Read on → Security You Can Trust At Every Level
Printer-related IT overhead and helpdesk calls often bog down in-house IT team members: On-site print servers require regular maintenance, and IT needs to troubleshoot print errors because of print drivers or print queue management. This can be tedious, especially within large organizations.
Print is the last thing any IT leader wants to take care of–and many wish they could get rid of it altogether. Instead of draining resources managing print, you and your IT department could be working on more strategic initiatives.
Migrating to a cloud-centric or cloud-enabled print infrastructure removes complexity, reduces the workload for IT, and lowers support costs. When you move your print management to a secure cloud-based platform, IT can deploy and control the entire infrastructure easily—from anywhere, at any time. You can do everything from a single web-based interface.
Where does the phrase “No Print Management” come in? The print industry has, for a long time, been dedicated to delivering presumed-value offerings in the shape of advanced, complex feature sets (I.e., feature-rich solutions). In an effort to bring our attention to real-value solutions, at Y Soft, we’ve introduced the No Print Management concept.
While print management in its practice still exists, also in our cloud offerings, we’re making a deliberate effort to remove the print management work for your IT team. Instead, we’ll do the heavy lifting and let you enjoy a pure cloud printing solution that always works.
The IT department is evolving, and we want our solutions to reflect that change—and provide IT teams with bigger outcomes for less work.
📖 Read on → 8 Indicators that IT Transformation is in Full Swing
You can support business agility with a cloud environment. Opening a new office? Set up your infrastructure in minutes. Moving, adding, or changing printers? Update end-users instantly. Migrating your identity management (Azure AD or similar) to the cloud? Integrate print easily.
Your organization can easily facilitate and drive agility with the help of a cloud migration strategy. In-house infrastructures typically necessitate finding a server with particular technical specifications. As the organization grows, it will need to replace the same server because the business will require new specifications.
Cloud-based services automatically adjust server capacity without requiring expensive upgrades for each server.
In-house print solutions typically have limitations, owing to a lack of expertise, focus, or understanding of the options available. With a cloud print infrastructure, users can enjoy the convenience and security of printing with various functionalities. For instance, we ensure users always have the flexibility needed for hybrid or distributed workforces.
Cloud print solutions are made to be brand-agnostic and easy you access with any operating system. Your staff members can use their favorite devices and printers, without getting constrained now or in the future.
Intracoastal Realty, a real estate brokerage in Wilmington, North Carolina, adopted a cloud-first strategy for its print infrastructure. With ten offices and over 600 staff and real estate agents across various locations, they needed a secure, cloud-based solution that would make it easier for staff and agents to manage print requirements.
“In real estate, agents have to move quickly. When it comes to signing contracts, time is of the essence (…) When an agent visits any of our offices, they only see the printers available to them at that location, which makes life much easier for them and doesn’t end up in a call to the helpdesk”, CIO John Schweighardt says.
If you’re looking for a software service for your printers with all the benefits we’ve shared in this article, SAFEQ Cloud is for you.
At Y Soft, we've built a platform to migrate your print infrastructure to the cloud easily and securely. The platform makes printing simple and automated—so your IT team is free to focus on meaningful work.
With SAFEQ Cloud, we meet you wherever you are in your cloud journey. You can accelerate your digital transformation with a converged IT infrastructure—at your pace. As you grow and evolve, SAFEQ Cloud is right there with you.
Explore the nooks and crannies of SAFEQ Cloud in the links below.
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There are countless reasons to migrate to the cloud; and move print to cloud along with your other IT systems. The best way to determine if a migration is worth it for you is to hear about other businesses' successes.
In this article, we’ve shared the statistics and facts we’ve experienced. Next up is delving into real migration stories and the results they’ve yielded.
Listen to our podcast episode with Joe Saccente, Site IT Services Analyst at Mars Inc. He talks about reasons to migrate to the cloud and how print should be an invisible process that works like a utility. “People just expect it to work, but when it goes down then it’s pandemonium”. With cloud technology, that chaos goes away.
Listen to this 44-minute episode and let it inspire you with the possibilities of letting go of print management.