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.

Today's paper intensive vertical markets are produce, government, healthcare, financial, legal, education and banking. Each sector contains one or more components which are regulated, requires communication with a variety of disparate organizations and paper production is mandatory. As the economy decides whether or not to recover, these markets are moving forward aggressively to reduce manual business processes, infrastructure and IT costs,through the Cloud, Server Virtualization and other means.

FaxBack & AudioCodes  have produced a fax ATA which uses HTTPS versus the PSTN or traditional FoIP. Combined with the FaxBack solution suite of products, this is a technology to watch for several reasons. Faxback has been a pioneer in Fax Over IP solutions years prior to its rapid wide spread adoption. 

The Fax Over IP (FoIP) industry continues to mature and make strides as discussion continue on the eventual sunset of the PSTN network. The Smart ATA™ with SmartFoIP™ technology from Commetrex and NetGen is important to the FoIP industry. Commetrex and NetGen have been committed to ensuring the reliability of fax over ip by working with international telecommunication carriers, IP services providers, end users, the SIP Forum and more.

SIP adoption and implementation is rapidly increasing at all levels. The buzz around Internet Fax, Cloud Faxing and FoIP industries is SIP centered. Many consider the future of fax (not just fax over IP) revolves around SIP. The most common questions we are receiving at AllAboutFoIP.com are, "Who are the best SIP Trunk Providers for fax? Does SIP Peering matter with FoIP? Where do I turn if I have SIP interoperability issues? What are the best troubleshooting tools to use?"

 

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.

AllAboutFoIP.com, the #1 enterprise FoIP technology information resource on the internet announces Q3 launch of TMCNET.COM Fax Server Channel. The TMCNET.COM channel scheduled to launch in August will help AllAboutFoIP.com continue its mission of increasing FoIP industry awareness and value to vendor partners, IT specialists, VoIP and Telecom resellers, IP Communications consultants, Service providers and their clients…..

 

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.....

 

Dear FoIP Technology Providers and Analysts,

In October of 2010, merely 6 months ago, the first release of www.AllAboutFoIP.com was launched for the purpose of providing an un-biased and consolidated Fax over IP (FoIP) information resource, and for serving the growing industry as a whole.  Search engine rankings on a wide-variety of fax industry related terms continue to elevate and astound us.  We estimate that AllAboutFoIP.com already experiences roughly 36,000 pageviews per month, a majority from organic searches and referrals. In December, we launched our bi-monthly newsletter with a distribution list already approaching 10,000 recipients, with additional press releases providing worldwide exposure.

 

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). 

Moving to a FoIP solution provides a very natural gateway to Server Virtualization, which by itself meets many companies' goals for reducing power and heat toward their "Green" initiatives. The move to Server Virtualization also provides organizations with an entire new set of options for Disaster Recovery and High Availability.

The ability to truly centralize a Network Fax Server solution and avoid distributed architectures is another significant driver that leads many organizations to consider FoIP. By migrating to a FoIP solution we can eliminate the need for physical connectivity directly to the telecom network via traditional local Time-Division Multiplexed (TDM) circuit and eliminate geographical infrastructure constraints.

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.