Sunday, September 05, 2010
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Open Text Fax Servers, RightFax Edition Minimize

"Fax is a dying technology, right?"  Far from it.

The sale of new fax server systems just doesn't stop, with growth year after year since their inception. With email and the internet, why is faxing still around in such abundance?

  • A fax is a legal document that holds up in court
  • A fax receipt shows that you successfully delivered the fax to the intended party
  • Mom and Pop shops may not have email, but they have a fax machine!
  • Faxing is easy. Fighting with scanners and PDF converters to send things electronically is still too much trouble for many people.
  • Emails get lost, stuck in spam filters, and they bounce because attachments are too large. Fax numbers may be busy, but they retry automatically until they go through.
  • Faxes can't contain viruses unlike zip files with attachments

Another thing we've found is that the definition of "Fax" has changed. It used to impart images of people fumbling around with paper and cheap plastic fax machines, trying to figure out what to dial to get an outside line or fixing a paper jam. Faxing may still exist in that form in many places, but most of the Fortune 500 have a different notion of "faxing". Electronic fax documents can be sent from ERP systems, CRM systems, homegrown applications and users can print any document from their desk right to a "fax" printer driver. All these documents get converted to faxes with coversheets and are sent automatically by the fax server.

The industry has tried to term these new faxing paradigms as "Document Delivery", which really makes sense, but it just hasn't stuck. We still say "Fax". With the advent of MFP scanning, ERP integration, Fax Over IP technologies and workflow technologies on the receiving end of the fax, there is really little similarity between today's fax world and the fax world of just 5-10 years ago.

We've been involved with faxing technologies since 1992, and have worked with Captaris RightFax from version 5.x up through 9.x, whereby Open Text purchased Captaris and re-branded the product line as the Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition. Our resources have spent late nights sleeping on data center floors waiting for an install window, and have installed Fax Servers for many of the major financial institutions, hospital groups and small to mid size business in the southeast. Let us help you maximize your investment in a fax platform.

Fax servers in a nutshell... Minimize

We could copy and paste the Open Text web-site to bury you in technical jib-jab about the Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, but we'd rather show you quickly what a fax server can do, and then talk to you directly about your needs. If a fax server isn't a fit, we'll tell you straight away. If we think you'll get some benefit from it we'd love to be your partner.

Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition
Open Text offers fax server versions for small businesses all the way up to the large enterprises. There are fax installations with 1 channel of fax, all the way up to over 2,000 channels of fax! (Yes, over 9 T1's of faxing). Typically we say that you should have 4 well-used fax machines in production today before the ROI (return on investment) of a fax server makes sense, but it all depends on the value of the document to your organization and any security/privacy constraints you may have. HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley have changed the playing field for document delivery.

Sending/Receiving Faxes
If your email platform supports SMTP (which is pretty much ALL email platforms), you can route faxes into email addresses as TIF images or PDF files. You can even set it up so that you can send outbound emails that get turned into faxes and are sent out. Want more integration into your email platform? Modules are available for Microsoft Exchange/Outlook, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.

Open Text Fax Servers have great integration capabilities. There are modules for FileNet, Open Text Document Server - Alchemy Edition, SAP, Peoplesoft, Oracle Financials/Oracle CRM, Equitrac, Hummingbird, and more. Any application that has a database back-end that can support ODBC connections can be used to drive billing codes and fax phonebooks. That includes applications like Timberline, MAS90, Dynamics GP/Great Plains/Ax/Axapta/CRM, ACT, Sales Logix, you name it! There are very few applications we haven't been able to fax enable. AS/400, S/390 platforms are a popular platforms for fax integration. Using the Integration Module, you can fax from any platform that supports LPR print queues, TCP/IP socket posts, Websphere MQ, file directory saves, email, print merging, Java API's, XML API's, HTTP API's, .NET remoting, C/C++ API's... yes, there are more ways to integrate. You can even write your own application and embed RightFax right into your app using any number of methods, including the SDK. We do it all the time.

Telephony Technologies
Analog phone lines, Analog DID lines, PRI's & T1's from the phone company, tie-trunk T1's and PRI's from your phone system/PBX, Fax Over IP through Cisco, Avaya and other IP switches are just some of the many ways you can tie your Fax Server into the phone system. The cool thing with the new FoIP (Fax over IP) software is that you can virtualize your fax server. Since there is no Hardware to interface with the phone system, you can use MS Virtual Server or VMWare to create virtual servers. This is a popular option in today's data centers.

Platform Technologies
VMWare, MS Virtual Server and Citrix are some good production hosting and/or deployment methods. The Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition is only available on Microsoft Server OS's (but keep in mind you can interface with Linux,Unix,Sun,AS/400, etc all day long). The Fax Server supports Microsoft Cluster server for high availability and our techs have installed over 40 clustered faxing systems.

Pricing
Anywhere from $6K up to and over $150K, depending on the install and volume requirements. Priced on fax volume, not by the number of users, the ROI for for an Open Text Fax Server is well proven. It pays for itself in hard costs, and it radically decreases ROI timeframes if you include soft costs (time & labor). 100% of the Fortune 100 uses Open Text Fax Servers somewhere in the enterprise. Picking an Open Text Fax Server as your fax platform is never the wrong choice.

Open Text Fax Servers in the Enterprise
Open Text provides one of the most scalable faxing platforms on the market. You can divide up the server resources on to multiple physical or virtual servers, you can distribute fax servers throughout the World and use least cost routing to route faxes via phone lines, LAN or WAN, saving you big-time on internal document delivery and long-distance charges. Open Text Fax Servers can be configured in clusters and collectives, ensuring no single point of failure. Start simple and grow, or roll out a world wide solution, we're here to help.

Fax Servers for the small to mid-size business
Our engineers have installed fax servers at law firms, hospitals, medical labs/clinics, mortgage brokers, banks, financial services corporations, insurance agencies, school systems, petroleum refineries, manufacturing plants, food service providers and more. 1 fax line to 24 is typical for the small to mid-size. Once an Open Text Fax Server is configured and running, there is very little "upkeep". Our customers have constantly stated that the fax server is one of the most solid running application that they host in their environment. Some even forget it exists.. While we recommend staying on the latest and greatest version for support purposes there are many still running on versions of the fax platform that are over 10 years old. Don't fix it if it isn't broken right?

Call us or email us to start the discussion..

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