All About FoIP Blog

Pete Davidson of Davidson Consulting, well known fax technology industry analyst has shared with the AllAboutFoIP team and its website audience information about the OpenText acquisition of EasyLink..... There is plenty of buzz and blogs about what this will mean to the RightFax reseller channel, the fax server industry product landscape and current clients of RightFax and EasyLink.

Although the Fax Over IP industry does not have an industry conference event on its own yet, there are several notable events where one or more fax server vendors, industry analysts or development engineers can be found to learn more about the fax over IP, SIP faxing technology and products.

 

All the buzz is “fax modernized.”  Fax modernized is everywhere from Unified Communications to Cloud Computing to Microsoft Office 365.  1H-2011 illustrates that electronic fax defies knee-jerk perceptions, surprising exo-analysts like Frost & Sullivan, who abrubtly see what industry insiders like us have always known, that enterprise and traditional fax markets continue to grow and redefine themselves amidst global IT paradigm shifts.  Like the wheel, it was invented a long time ago and is still a damn good solution, constantly enjoying improvements.

What is Fax Modernized? 

Fax modernized is a mature form of electronic document exchange.  It reigns as an undisputed front runner for compliance, cost-reduction and consolidation initiatives, and simply represents the evolution of faxing away from traditional fax machines towards evolving document exchange networks including multi-functional digital onramps (MFP Faxing), locally encrypted network attached scanners (Fujitsu 1800N-OTIS), and secure electronic document exchange, rarely originated or terminated as paper.  All the same, electronic document exchange still hangs its hat on proven, reliable and evolving secure transmission methods in the families of PSTN, Fax over IP (FoIP), http over SSL (https and https fax) and alternative modes of secure file transfer.

 

Davidson Consulting, lead by Peter Davidson fax server industry expert analyst, has published a new report on FoIP Server Markets, that states the fax over IP (FoIP) market will grow during the five-year forecast period, from $130 million in 2009 to $415 million in 2014, a 26.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Companies are converting their conventional fax servers to FoIP servers and increasing adoption of Internet-based fax services and Cloud Faxing technologies.  Mr. Davidson indicates market growth will also be driven by server virtualization, centralization of fax operations, enhanced IP infrastructures, VoIP initiatives requiring an IP fax strategy, the ability to FoIP enable both multifunction peripherals (MFPs) and traditional fax machines while preserving audit trails and satisfying compliance regulations. 

Davidson Consulting, the ground hog of the fax technology industry, has published its new report appropriately titled FoIP Server Markets.   The name change from Fax Server to FoIP Server reinforces the trend of IP, VoIP and Cloud infrastructure and its applications in the fax technology market.  The report research indicates the FoIP Server markets will expand during the next five-year period, and industry anticipated revenue will grow.....

 

It is 2011, and faxing in the healthcare market continues to check out in great shape as hospitals, insurers, payment processors, laboratories, and medical product manufacturers all use fax servers and fax services to move documents confidentially.  With fax servers and fax services, documents typically arrive in secure fax to e-mail or fax client applications, or directly into healthcare management systems, so no one can read patient information except authorized users.  Fax immediately converts paper documents into electronic documents at the source.

 

Fax server software, fax appliances, multi-functional devices and Internet fax services are transforming into Fax over IP servers and cloud faxing solutions.  These offerings are sometimes also coined IP Fax or VoIP Fax.  Globally, enterprise class organizations and carrier offerings are driving an improvement of the IP networks to increase overall reliability, bandwidth and relevance for the new and exciting technologies offered by SIP Trunking.  In the midst of these IP network improvements are SIP and SIP trunking discussions as a compliment to VoIP implementations, ultimately a migration strategy away from traditional PSTN (TDM networks). 

If you do a Google search on Cloud Faxing, most of the entries, including the sponsored links will reveal fax to email companies or an up and coming crop of hosted fax server solutions. These are all viable options and represent components of Cloud Faxing. etherFAX redefines the term Cloud Faxing by giving clients the best of both worlds with the addition of a multi-level encryption/security system known as a "defense-in-depth" conceived by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Over the last several years, we've seen a tremendous surge in organizations moving toward Fax Over IP (FoIP) technology. We've seen this not only from companies with extensive embedded investments in Voice Over IP (VoIP) infrastructure, but also from those that have yet to make the leap and may not currently have the available resources to do so in the near future. Contrary to the misconception that implementing FoIP means free faxing to anyone around the globe, there are some very solid reasons and unmistakable ROI cases to be made that warrant companies to look closely at these solutions. So what are the predominate drivers that we hear repeatedly in the field that result in companies considering the move to FoIP? Let's take a look.

One debate that arises in many enterprises is whether the business wants to use a FoIP (fax over IP) server or hosted Internet fax service. This debate turns on the performance of servers versus services and on the relative costs for each, along with how important the information on the faxes is.

In the abstract, fax servers and fax services do the same things. They enable businesses to send, receive and manage faxes. But in the real world, differences do exist. First, FoIP servers generally can do more than typical hosted fax services. FoIP servers generally boast a number of APIs (application programming interfaces) which means that businesses can customize the fax servers to work tightly with any of their applications. Second, more FoIP servers support production faxing (the ability to send out a batch of faxes and have every one be different in its specifics, so thousands of invoices or purchase orders can be sent out automatically), whereas this kind of capability is a rarity among fax services, which also generally don’t provide security on their lines. Also, FoIP servers generally have tighter integration with various external systems, like Microsoft Sharepoint for instance.

Many organizations have adopted a VoIP (Voice over IP) network infrastructure, or in some cases began a partial transition from traditional phone lines to IP, and thus are already reaping the 5 primary benefits of a unified communications strategy. A unified communications strategy involves the migration of primary business communication methods such as voice, data, video and fax from traditional analog phone lines onto an IP-based network, including the internet. Terms commonly used as a part of these unified communication migrations are VoIP (voice over IP) & FoIP (fax over IP).

Fax machines, fax servers and fax services continue to evolve towards a Fax over IP (FoIP) strategy, and FoIP will become the future of fax communications. As the Fax over IP (FoIP) industry matures, Fax over IP (FoIP) will become cheaper, faster, and easier to use, while dramatically enhancing consolidation and business continuance initiatives.

While there are thousands of sites and products dedicated to understanding voice transmission over an IP network (VoIP) and the internet, there are very few which discuss Fax over IP (FoIP). As a key fax server industry advocate, fax insider and reseller for 20 years, the goal of the "All About FoIP" website is to provide valuable information regarding Fax over IP (FoIP) for business executives and technology professionals to make well informed decisions.