We’ve been hearing for years about the so-called “paperless office” but it seems as mythical as ever. This is of course not such a bad thing for printer giant Hewlett-Packard, which is aiming to provide businesses with new avenues to print stuff.

HP announced on Monday, along with Research in Motion, that it will extend its Web-based CloudPrint service to the BlackBerry, allowing users to print directly from the ubiquitous email devices.

“For the first time you are truly mobile on everything,” said Patrick Scaglia, chief technology officer of HP’s imaging and printing group, in a interview.

“Smartphones are great to read an email, but as soon as it’s a little too much information on the one page, it’s really painful…it’s really needed to be able to say, ‘I can’t read this, let’s print it.’”

Users can select any printer, HP or not, in a company’s network. Scaglia wouldn’t say when the CloudPrint service for the BlackBerry will launch. In the near future, he said, BlackBerry users will be able to register printers outside the office — say, in a copy shop — and print from there.