Print servers can facilitate centralized and efficient print management, offering advantages including lower cost, ease of configuration and access to many print devices with various capabilities.

There are many ways to approach printer management in the enterprise, but the Windows 10 Print Management tool offers a single interface for centralized print management -- a cost-effective and wide-ranging approach to managing printers -- in business environments.

The centralized printing management approach provides access to a few powerful network print devices managed by simple print servers and local printers for individual users.

Local printers. These attach directly to the users' system and may require specific toner, drivers and maintenance.

Network printers. These attach to the network and are shared by many users, so fewer management tasks are required. These devices are usually more feature rich.

Network print servers and devices offer many advantages over local printer configurations:

As an IT administrator, your server admin team will typically construct the print server infrastructure. That team will also make connection specifications available, including hostname or IP address information, and expected access control details -- which users get access to which print devices.

Your job is to connect client systems to this print infrastructure to provide reliable, consistent and secure access to print services. This client computer component is an interface for configuring connectivity to one or more printers, enabling comprehensive administration and print job oversight. The Windows Print Management utility smoothly integrates Windows clients into this managed environment.

However, you should be aware that Microsoft differentiates between printer and print device in much of its documentation. Typically, a printer is considered configurable software, and a print device is the hardware component.