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FAX: A STRATEGIC MESSAGING PLATFORM |
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Computer Facsimile Committee - Electronic Messaging Association Contributors include: Max Schroeder, COO, Optus Software,
Inc., Chairman Computer Facsimile Committee of EMA. Stuart McRae, Director of Multimedia Messaging Systems, Soft-Switch Division of Lotus Development, Chairman European Computer Facsimile Group (ECFG), the Computer
Facsimile Committee of EEMA George Mount, Facsimile Product Manager, Octel Communications James Rafferty, President Human Communication, staff consultant EMA http://www.eema.org Copyright © EEMA. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transcribed in any form or by any means, written, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from EMA.0 Most of the names of
products and companies mentioned in this document are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. This information is provided for reference only and is subject to change without
notice. No responsibility for the use of the information provided herein is assumed by any of the sources or EMA. Sources for materials in this document are listed in the appendices and all other credit for this
document should be the Computer Facsimile Committee of the E-mail Association (EMA). Large portions of this document were provided by Davidson Consulting, with additional content from Octel Communications and Lotus
Development Corporation. Table of Contents
This document describes considerations when incorporating fax technologies as a key technology in an overall messaging infrastructure. The document's intent is to provide an introductory reference on fax technologies for organizations determining how fax would fit into their enterprise messaging architecture. The document highlights both technical and business aspects associated of fax technologies. Reference information is provided on computer based facsimile applications and its integration into a messaging infrastructure. It is not a complete reference but should answer reader's questions and provide a road map for organizations planning a computer based facsimile architecture. It does not attempt to address issues related to facsimile machines, except in their relation to computer based fax and how they work together.
It is organized into the following major sections:
What is Fax? Fax is very old in terms of most of today's messaging technologies. Many people in the computer industry that are familiar with e-mail and computer-based-fax (CBF) have the impression that e-mail was invented first. Actually, a Scottish inventor named Alexander Bain first patented fax in 1843. The technology was primitive compared to today's, but it existed 100 years before the first e-mail message was sent. The first commercial fax service was implemented between Paris and Lyon in 1865. Called the "Pantelegraph" machine, the service used a telegraph line combined with a timing device (chronometer) synchronized with a pendulum. Later, in the 20th century, devices that used electronic (rather that electromechanical) means to send messages were introduced. However, these devices could not connect to the public switched telephone network and expensive leased-line circuits were necessary. Fax machines continued to remain the domain of specialized interests like the newspaper industry and law enforcement until 1966, when the Electronic Industries Association (EIA) announced its first fax standard: EIA Standard RS-328 (later referred to as the Group 1 standard). This provided compatibility for fax units outside North America, but those within this geographic area still could not communicate with Group 1 machines or other North American produced units. It was not until 1978 that the international standards organization, the CCITT (now the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), released its Group 2 recommendation which allowed fax to have worldwide compatibility. When the Group 3 standard appeared in the 1980s the explosion began and fax became an integral part of our business, and later, our personal lives. With its higher transmission speed and compression, Group 3 a digital fax standard that provided a reliable and inexpensive solution. This migration to even higher speeds, and other advanced features like error correction, continues today within the Group 3 standard. Currently, Group 3 incorporates many of the features initially proposed for Group 4 fax (e.g. higher compression and better image resolution) and now is moving into areas beyond the original Group 4 standard (such as Binary File Transfer and color). Group 4 fax was designed for digital networks, rather than the existing public analog telephone network. Due to the complexity of support and the cost of machines, as well as the economic imperative for universal interoperability, Group 4 fax never took off as a worldwide standard. Since the necessary standards to use Group 3 fax over digital networks have now also been defined, Group 3 now appears set to be the standard for worldwide interoperable facsimile over the public telephone network into the next century, and Group 4 is not likely to be see widespread adoption. The question of "What Is Fax" has become more difficult to define with the introduction of computer based fax boards and systems. Until a few years ago this was an easy question to answer – fax is a transmission of an image between two or more specialized devices called fax machines. Today, fax can be sent by many methods, but despite these many advances, fax technology in any form is simply a method of sending an image from point A to point B. As the topic of this paper confirms, fax is no longer only about traditional fax machines. The sender, or recipient, or both, may now be a computer system. This provides new ways to address the traditional problems with faxing - like discovering whether, and when, a fax was actually delivered to its recipients - as well as addressing new problems that highly sophisticated fax machines are creating - like when, and if, a fax stored into memory actually gets sent. In the early days of fax, the piece of thermal paper that it produced was something special, with a reverence akin to that of the telegram in the days before e-mail. However, today's plain paper faxes in most offices lie around in public places until someone decides to pick them up and do something with them. Many organizations are realizing that the only really effective ways to deploy traditional fax machines are in the central post room, or a personal machine per desk. Today’s pooled machines, scattered randomly around offices, vastly increase the likelihood of a lost fax (and how do you assess the value of a lost fax?) There are a number of factors which are key to the popularity of Fax. Simplicity, speed, and confirmation are the three primary reasons most cited for the use of fax. Even today, according to a study by the Gallup Poll commissioned by Pitney-Bowes, fax is the primary medium for sending a document when it is of vital importance. Confirmation of a fax’s arrival is an important aspect of ones confidence in this medium, and while other messaging mediums are beginning to address this issue, people are much more comfortable with the level of confirmation and security that fax machines provide. The fact that many of these benefits may be illusory (the fax reached the target fax machine, but when will it reach the recipient?) has little impact on the perceived value of the service. Fax owes its continued growth and popularity to universal interoperability between fax devices, and the simple fact that end users understand how the faxing of paper works. A fax machine combines the ease of use of the telephone and the photocopier, and people with little grasp of how e-mail works, or how they should us it, understand fax implicitly. Fax transmits an image, and that image remains intact. Language is not a barrier - any language and character set can be used to create a fax. You can also include drawings and pictures in a fax. The recipient does not need to have a specific application, just a fax machine. In short, simply placing a document in a fax machine and entering a telephone number is by far the easiest way to send a message to anyone in the world. As well as permitting word processor documents, spreadsheets and presentations to be faxes directly, today's computer based fax (CBF) technology allow users to scan in paper documents for later transmission, modify the images first, combine documents, and access many other advanced features. However, the bulk of today's fax documents continues to be sent from and to the standard fax machine - the new "revolution" in faxing has only just begun. There are many reasons why CBF has taken so long to develop (the first PC-to-fax hardware products were released in 1985). Some, like the approval requirements of various countries, were a matter of normal bureaucratic red tape. Others, like the evolution of more sophisticated software, the availability of universal and reliable e-mail, the development of affordable technology for inbound fax routing, and the evolution of voice messaging, the Internet and Intranet, and are more complex. However, they all lead to one conclusion – end-users want faster, easier, and less expensive methods to communicate with each other that work with existing documents and are not limited to plain text. Plus, they want all of these methods to be compatible with each other - and that includes interoperability between paper and electronic communications. Today we can send fax documents from a PC to a fax machine, from a fax machine to a PC, from a fax device to a voice mail system (and vice versa), via the Internet or a cellular link, combined with voice and e-mail, and in many other forms. We can store these images in a document management and/or imaging application and manipulate them. We can interface to accounting applications to send out invoices or monthly statements. We can fax shipping notices and meeting invitations. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) lets us turn received faxes into text for revision, or reads them to us over the telephone. Store-and-forward fax service companies also provide a convenient method of handling high volume broadcasts, or simply provide a "mail-box" for convenient storage and delivery. X.400 and Internet service providers offer value-added fax gateways; standards are being developed to allow fax sessions to occur over Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) networks; voice mail systems integrate fax mailboxes; binary file transfer (rather than image) is occurring over fax sessions; and new universal messaging systems are appearing which are hybrid voice, fax and electronic messaging systems. A comprehensive answer to "what is fax" is certainly beyond the scope of this brief document. To provide a detailed description of all that is possible would take too much time, and would probably be irrelevant to many readers’ needs. A brief summary of the key points is included in this document. Recent Gallup/Pitney Bowes surveys estimated that up to 41-50% of all corporate telephone costs may be attributable to fax. Some other surveys have placed the percentage between 33-40%. Regardless, even 33% is a significant amount. Large enterprises should also be aware that according to the Gallup/Pitney Bowes survey, up to 48% of faxes in such organizations are within the company - a significant cost indeed! Whatever you define fax as, there can be no doubt that it is a significant problem for most organizations - even though many may not realize the fact! The computer based fax market can be segmented into a large number of categories but, to keep things simple, we have selected a three-tiered solution – personal fax solutions, Local Area Network (LAN) servers, and enterprise servers. The following information will help you evaluate personal, departmental, or enterprise fax solutions. Many different types of fax application exist within these three solution classes. Here are some definitions to help us describe the different kinds of computer based fax solutions: Fax Server - A PC or Unix server, or self-contained unit, that has fax applications accessible to all the network's workstations. The server receives requests for fax services and manages them so that they are answered in an orderly, sequential manner. It is used to send and receive faxes by many users or applications, sharing the common resource of one or more fax modems. LAN Fax Servers - LAN Fax Servers serve the small and medium enterprises, as well as individual departments within a large enterprise. In most cases they communicate directly with the user's desktop via a file sharing or client/server connection (although some also offer e-mail integration). A network fax server allows users to send faxes from their network workstations (typically PCs). Typically, either a file sharing, client/server or e-mail connection is made between software on the user's workstation and the fax server. Many fax servers allow the faxing of documents from the applications that created them (via "printer emulation"), leaving users free to continue with their work. In addition, incoming faxes can often be directed back to the user's workstation. Enterprise Fax Servers- Satisfying the needs of large, geographically dispersed corporations, enterprise fax servers offer least-cost routing internally via the company’s Wide Area Network (WAN) and centralized management of distributed solutions. Typically they will exploit the enterprise messaging infrastructure to provide global connectivity and least cost routing, but direct file sharing or network connections between servers and desktops are sometimes also provided (giving reach to users without e-mail). Mini/Mainframe Fax Servers - Although many businesses generate and store information on mainframes or minicomputers, most computer-based fax hardware is PC or Unix based. A messaging or file transfer protocol typically moves faxes between host applications and fax servers. Many mini/mainframe fax servers function in the same way as LAN fax servers: users and applications can send and receive faxes from their terminals, saving both time and money while increasing the quality of their fax transmissions. Today, most corporate applications still reside on mainframe or minicomputer systems, and implementing fax enabled applications in those environments can be a key cost justification for computer fax deployment. Voice Mail Systems - Many current voice mail systems also offer some fax server functionality, often deriving from the natural extension of their base functionality to provide fax mailboxes. They may be based on PC, minicomputer, or proprietary systems. Currently, they are often limited outbound to retransmitting faxes which were received inbound as faxes, but as they acquire PC interfaces and evolve to be universal messaging solutions they are starting to compete in the general purpose fax server market. E-Mail Fax Gateways - With an e-mail fax gateway, users can send and receive faxes from within their e-mail package. Because fax messaging is integrated directly into the mail system, fax users have virtually no new software to learn and can take advantage of e-mail features, such as private and public distribution lists, attaching files of various types to text messages, support for different user operating systems on the network, delivery notifications for fax transmissions, and instant notification of received messages. All modern e-mail systems now provide a built in fax image viewer, which can be used to view inbound faxes, as do all currently available Windows platforms. With an e-mail fax gateway, it is possible to send the same message to both mail users and fax recipients, and the widespread availability of mail-enabled application programming interfaces makes fax enabling applications straightforward with such solutions. Some e-mail systems now support text, voice, and fax, thus providing true integrated unified messaging, as well a printer emulation when using an e-mail fax gateway. Personal Fax Solutions - These serve the traveling professional, the very small business, and the individual home worker. They tend to complement, rather than replace, fax server solutions in the corporate environment, since an individual fax telephone line to every desktop is rarely viable. Increasingly, all kinds of computer based fax are being integrated with e-mail and voice mail. Due to the dynamic nature of the fax and messaging industry new products are entering the market continuously. This document is limited in scope and will not cover all possible options and features available in all these types of solution. But it will cover those options that are the most popular in today’s environments. LAN and Enterprise Fax Servers LAN and Enterprise fax servers provide access to all users on the network, either directly or via the e-mail network. Personal fax products allow sending and receiving from the home or a hotel room. All allow the user to directly send the 80% of faxed documents that are generated by a computer. LAN and Enterprise fax servers remove the costs associated with personal solution for a group of desk-based users by eliminating the costs of separate fax modems, software, and phone lines for each desk. In this way, these solutions solve the scalability issues of expanding computer based fax use to many users, and allow the server to be managed as part of the infrastructure, rather than being handled by each user. E-mail integration extends these capabilities to mobile and transiently connected users. Now, users do not have to design their own cover sheets, maintain fax number directories, and troubleshoot transmission failures as a company can choose to have standard cover pages and a company-wide directory. Many times, this centralized management function is included as part of managing the corporate e-mail infrastructure. By centrally providing things like cover sheets and corporate (or departmental) fax directories, users can be productively faxing with little or no administrative overhead. This makes true productivity gains possible. Enterprise fax further servers address the scalability problems introduced by LAN fax servers, since placing a fax server on every LAN, next to each file server, has limited cost justification and increases administrative costs. Most enterprise fax servers use an existing messaging infrastructure, which not only carries fax and e-mail traffic, but may also provide Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), forms routing and approval, voice mail, and application messaging. It also often supports mobile users and small remote communities. Using this infrastructure for routing, and existing desktop e-mail facilities for fax preparation and display, minimizes additional administrative costs, while integration into the messaging management environments significantly reduces operational costs. Inbound Faxing Inbound fax routing using e-mail is an optimal combination. Solutions that deliver faxes directly to the e-mail in-basket provide a completely confidential solution for inbound routing, and allow users to receive faxes when traveling as well as when they are sitting at their desks. Today there are many technologies in common use to allow the appropriate recipient to be identified for a fax which has been received. Direct Inward Dial (DID, also called DDI in Europe) is the most seamless solution, which works in exactly the same way as direct dial to a set of telephone extensions and fax machines spread throughout an organization. A large set of telephone numbers (perhaps a thousand, or ten thousand, or more) are rented from the telephone company. These may be a separate bank of numbers used only for fax, with a separate connection to the telephone company's exchange, or may be a subset of the total number of extensions routed to the company PBX - the only difference being where the much smaller number of trunk lines that carry calls to those extensions are connected (to the PBX to be routed via locally defined tables, or to a dedicated fax device). In the US, traditional analog DID or E&M (PBX to PBX) circuits, a T1 device, or a modern CTI application is used to connect the fax devices to the PBX or network provider. In Europe, a Basic Rate or Primary Rate ISDN connection is the de facto standard for connecting to either a telephone company or a PBX. When a DID number is dialed, the call is connected over a trunk channel and the fax application informed of the number dialed. In an e-mail fax gateway, this will be mapped to a specific user's e-mail address. Of course, direct fax to the user's mailbox is not ideal for everyone. Just as there are cases when a pooled fax machine managed by a secretary is the most appropriate solution, so inbound fax routing to a secretarial position is more appropriate in certain. For example, faxes might be delivered to an administrative assistant for a sales team, who can take appropriate action to handle faxes during vacations or business trips (forwarding a copy to the appropriate sales person if appropriate). Also, remember that a particular DID fax number can cause routing to multiple recipients (e.g. a manager and secretary), and multiple fax numbers can all map to the same e-mail recipient (e.g. to route to roles, line the Finance Department, as well as individuals, or allowing users to have direct dial fax numbers in every country their organization has a fax gateway). Hence, a single inbound fax recipient might be an individual, a job function, a distribution list, a set of rules to perform the appropriate routing (e.g. based on time of day), or even an application, depending on the circumstance. The fax might even route to a printer or an internal fax machine. As a result, the number of DID numbers required rarely matches the number of employees (as it may do for telephone extensions). This flexibility is a key benefit of inbound computer-based fax solutions. Other inbound routing solutions exist when individual DID numbers are not cost effective. DTMF routing requires the originator to enter the extension of the recipient after the receiving fax modem has answered the phone. This technique is often used to provide access to Enhanced Fax Services and Broadcast Fax distribution lists, and is sometimes coupled with an interactive voice response system to assist the user (though such a system is not required). DTMF routing also allows large numbers of fax extensions to be defined at no cost, and so is often used to allow any e-mail user to receive a fax even if they do not justify an externally published DID number (permitting internal users to send a fax to any mailbox is a critical part of achieving interoperability between paper and electronic messaging). Other automatic inbound routing alternatives which are useful for specific situations are Transmitting Subscriber Identification (TSI) based routing (based on the Called Subscriber Identification (CSI) of the sending fax machine, and so often called CSI routing), line-based routing (routing based on the line a fax came in on, allowing specific server fax lines to be dedicated to specific recipients), and Caller ID routing (routing based on the Calling Line Identification provided for the fax call). Some specialist companies also provide Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) based fax routing, which attempts to avoid the deficiencies of OCR based routing (90% reliability just isn't good enough and recipient names are often hand written anyway) by using neural network techniques that can learn how to route faxes, together with operator intervention. Other companies offer forms based routing, by using special cover sheet containing information about the recipient (e.g. in a bar code or recognisable form). At this time, one additional standards-based automatic inbound routing mechanism has come into play. T.33 Subaddressing is a mechanism which allows a sending fax device to encode within the fax data an additional number to be used to identify the final recipient. The drawback today is that most of the 50 million plus fax machines in the world are not able to specify a subaddress when they send a fax. However this feature will appear more in the future, allowing a user to enter a fax number on a sending fax machine similar to "1-703-524-5558#512" to deliver a fax to extension 512 at that fax number. Finally, if automatic routing is not possible, manual routing is the only option. Indeed, in many companies manual routing is always required as well as the automatic kind, so that the company can publish a single corporate fax number. Many fax servers provide high performance manual routing applications, which may also provide access to the e-mail directory to assist in finding recipients. Some offer security features like the ability to view the cover page only (though this has limited use if the operator can route a copy of the message to themselves!) Alternatively, many organisations prefer to route such faxes to a default e-mail recipient, who will use the forwarding capability of the e-mail client to perform the distribution. This technique can also allow several default routing operators to be defined (e.g. for different operating divisions or physical locations). Fax-on-Demand and Fax Broadcasting Fax servers can also be shared by voice/fax solutions like Fax-On-Demand (FOD) and fax broadcasting, although for large applications involving these technologies, a specialist, standalone system or service is often considered. FOD is the technology that allows one to dial into a company and by responding to a series of questions, via Interactive Voice Response (IVR), have one or more faxed documents sent to the fax location of their choice. Two variants exist - in one case the FOD server returns that fax during the same telephone call, which must therefore be made from a fax machine handset (and the caller pays), and in the other case a separate call is made to return the fax allowing the caller to use any telephone (in which case the company called pays to return the fax) - the latter case is more amenable to using a standard fax server than the former, and is also now being deployed in the form of Web initiated fax on demand (rather than voice initiated). Fax Broadcasting involves sending a fax (from a fax machine or a computer fax user) to a large number of recipients (possibly thousands). Some standard fax servers support such broadcasting, and some do not. Also, depending on the frequency of such transmissions and the size of the distribution list, there may or may not be a justification for installing sufficient line capacity for such transmissions instead of using a service provider. Other Enterprise Fax Applications Fax servers can also be used for electronic commerce (or "informal EDI") applications, thus breaking down one of the main barriers to electronic trading by small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), by delivering EDI transactions to them as hard copy faxes. Contact management applications, banking transactions, invoice and billing, and many other applications can also share the same fax server. For small companies that infrequently have the need to send large broadcasts, fax servers can also be linked to commercial service providers. Fax servers can link to the Internet and use the Internet as a transmission medium to save costs on phone calls. Some service offerings are starting to appear in this area. What is more widespread is the use of corporate Intranets to allow faxes to be routed between corporate locations - thus addressing the large number of faxes sent within one company. Today, there a growing number of options available to companies wishing to deploy fax over the Internet. However, all of these are proprietary. Standards work in this area has already begun, and the first nonproprietary solutions will be forthcoming soon. The following list contains some of the most of the popular features found in today's fax applications. Features appropriate to enterprise based fax servers are particularly noted, due to the audience for this document. Sending Faxes Provisions for a variety of ways to transmit a fax. Depending on the platform, many different choices are available including print to fax, e-mail, a specialist application, application program interfaces (APIs), drag & drop, etc. E-mail Compatibility Outgoing e-mail documents can be sent as a fax. Simple image attachments may be support, or sophisticated documents may be able to be rendered to fax format by the server. Notification of a successful send or a transmission failure is via e-mail. Failure notifications for faxes from applications should be capable of being rerouted to another user. Incoming documents can be automatically routed to, and viewed in, e-mail as an attachment in a choice of formats. Multiple Phone Books Support of multiple phone directories, including both system and personal phone books. Provisions for customizable menu-driven import and export facilities may also be available. Integration with e-mail address books and enterprise messaging directories (e.g. within the client, or enterprise-wide via LDAP) is highly desirable when integrated messaging is deployed. Printer Emulation An emulator environment on the server will allow HP PCL 5 and/or PostScript Level II documents to be sent as mail attachments, while printer emulation on the user's workstation allows fax to be configured as a print destination (and is easier to use). Both approaches allow fonts and graphic objects to be included in faxes, but workstation based printer emulation provides better support for local fonts, file embedding, and macros within documents. High and Low Fax Resolutions Support for both standard and fine mode Group 3 transmission is required in current products. Fax Transmission Features Today’s fax machines and software should support Error Correction mode and transmission speeds up to 14.4 Kbps. Transmission using the latest V.34 standards (at 28.8 and 33.6) is not defined in the standards and starting to appear in products. If high function fax machines are available at the other end of the call, then a range of compression algorithms (MR and MMR, as well as MH) and higher fax resolutions might be attractive. Color fax standards have now been defined and will start to appear in coming years. Cover Pages The automatic generation of cover pages to corporate standards should be provided. A selection of corporate standard cover sheets should be generally available (with a user specific default, possibly selected by the user themselves to ease administration), and user designed cover sheets may be permitted - some systems come with quite extensive cover page design capabilities. Originator specific defaults (such as their name, organization, Internet address, and fax and telephone number) should be substituted on the cover sheet automatically. Some systems also support per-department cover pages. Group Transmission Also called broadcast fax. This allows users to send a single document to multiple recipients. In most cases having individualized cover pages is desired. The maximum number of recipients that can be handled effectively, varies widely. For applications involving unsolicited faxes to groups or individuals, please refer to the section later in this document regarding legal restrictions from the FCC. Prioritization The ability for the user to assign a priority to the fax to control the scheduling of its transmission. Ideally, it should be possible to set the maximum priority per user, and for the administrator to override priorities set. The priority must be recorded in the accounting data for charge-back. Scheduled/Delayed/No later than Transmission The ability to schedule a transmission at a designated time on a designated day, or at a time that is no later than a specified time. Automatic Scheduling of Transmission The ability of the fax server to automatically schedule a transmission at a later time (subject to the priority selected). Allows cost savings (by moving or delaying low priority messages to off-peak times). Auto Redial on Busy Signals Provisions for the retransmission of documents that failed due to no answer, a busy signal, a poor connection, or another nonfatal error. If the event of a failure, the application should be able to dial the destination again and continue at the last page, resending the cover page (amended so the recipient knows what happened). Real-Time Monitoring of Activity Allows a user to view the status of all fax receptions or transmissions. Quick Send Users can send just a cover page including a short message. This is often easy to do when a fax server is integrated with e-mail by simply creating a mail message. The fax server may be able to place such a short message on the same page as the cover sheet, to save transmission costs. Embedded Codes Supports embedded telephone numbers for easy faxing of documents generated by a mail-merge and/or other applications. DTMF Outbound Although many fax servers support DTMF for inbound fax routing, fewer provide software and hardware support to allow DTMF routing to be used when sending faxes. Routing of Incoming Faxes Supports many different routing methods, including: DID, DTMF, CSI, T.33 Subaddressing, manual, and line routing. Users can be automatically notified of received faxes by e-mail - either with the received fax as an attachment, or with the fax output to a network printer (or PBX attached fax machine). There is no effective single standard for routing incoming faxes to multiple-users on networks, but many of the existing schemes available do work well when the person sending the fax is provided with the information needed to input the correct information upon transmission (e.g. the DID extension to use from a business card). When automatic routing is used (typically DID or DTMF), the destination identified may be an individual user, or it may be an administrator for a work group (e.g. a secretary) who will forward the fax as appropriate. Viewer Features Viewers should not only provide quick and easy viewing, but also include added features like document rotation, image enhancement, character recognition, highlighting, redlining, and text annotation. Fax Relay Support for fax-to-fax transmission via the server (normally using DTMF addressing) allows users to send faxes to hundreds of recipients in a single transmission, as well as allowing the least cost routing capabilities of an enterprise fax solution to be exploited by users of real fax machines. Some form of PIN number is normally required to identify the sender (for access controls, and also to allow non delivery notifications to be routed back to the user - via either fax or e-mail). Access Level Detection/Built-in Security A set of security privileges to deny or approve access to system features. For example, if a fax server can transmit e-mail messages, it is essential that e-mail from outside the organization (e.g. the Internet) is not transmitted as a free service to anyone who discovers it. Charge-Back Capability Users can associate a billing code with their fax transmissions, which are used to track fax costs back to individuals or projects. An integrated billing application may be provided, or more often a standard format file generated for import into a report writing or database package. Multiple Servers Multiple server support provides the ability to up scale your system, can provide redundancy for fault resilience if alternate routing is possible, and may offer least cost routing of faxes to the cheapest delivery point. Least cost routing should be rules-based and may be time sensitive (as the best route often varies by time of day). Reports Standard or customized reporting features that can be run against all outbound and inbound fax transmissions. A utility to permit users to automatically generate send, and receive statistics and audit trails to ASCII files that can be incorporated in other reports, is also a desirable feature (e.g. for management reporting, cost justification, and capacity planning). Real-Time Status Administrators and users are able to view the present status of all system or personal transmission activity (possibly with restrictions on access to message contents). Some fax boards provide lights which monitor their status at a glance. Remote Administration Useful in the larger systems, the ability to centrally administer the system, and monitor its operation, is of great value. Into today’s network management landscape, SNMP support is desirable for alarms and statistics gathering (and possibly management and configuration, although no standards currently exist for this). Alerts The fax server will perform system house keeping and monitor system resources, generating early warning indicators. Configurable alerts could include: low disk space, automatic deletion of faxes based on age and error rate threshold on a specified line. Different ways of distributing such alerts should be provided (e.g. visual, audible, SNMP traps, pagers, e-mail). Event Logging and Error Reporting The server will track all of the services including starting, stopping, or any fatal or potentially harmful exceptions generated by the system. One of the major goals for the deployment of fax technology into an enterprise communication infrastructure is to extend its reach and avoid the "walking to the fax machine" process - which also has a side benefit of cutting down on "fax grazing" at fax machines. Enhancing end user productivity and fax confidentiality provides the largest returns in computer based fax deployment, but is also the hardest to quantify. How long do employees spend standing at fax machines? What other nonessential activity is a result of the interruption to their work? What loss might an organization suffer through a fax which is not delivered without the knowledge of the submitting user? What damage can be done to an organization when an employee reads a fax that they should not have access to? It is hard to attach a dollar value to these benefits, so many deployments become an act of faith, or are justified on other quantifiable grounds - such as reduced transmission costs or manpower reductions. Deployment invariably involves the integration of computer-based facsimile into an existing environment. Integration approaches vary depending on the organization's existing infrastructure. CBF introduces the potential for many new and unique uses of fax as a communication service. Deployment strategies range from desktop, to departmental, to enterprise. Desktop deployments work for the individual but do not scale for the enterprise. Server-based solutions make fax available as a shared network resource to a work-group or department, but may not scale well for an enterprise deployment. Finally, enterprise solutions take advantage of an infrastructure like a messaging network to reliably move fax-based information from user desktops to fax servers for delivery. In summary, the alternative approaches to fax deployment include: Personal Fax Software: This involves a desktop software application that drives a local PC fax card or modem connected to a suitable telephone line provided to every desk. Fax Server on a LAN: This is PC software or a self-contained unit that makes its fax connectivity accessible to all the network's workstations. Many fax servers allow the faxing of documents directly from the applications that created them, leaving users free to continue with their work. The server receives requests for fax services via a client/server or file sharing interface, and manages them so that they are processed in an orderly, sequential manner. It can be used to send and receive faxes by any network user, sharing the common resource of one or more fax boards. Different fax server products offer different ways of handling incoming faxes, but most use one of the following: the fax can be received by an operator who forwards it to the proper workstation; there can be a direct fax telephone line accessed through a Direct Inward Dial (DID) line; or a fax extension can be assigned to particular workstations for DTMF ("touch-tone") routing, perhaps via a specialized interactive voice response system that prompts the fax machine user. Once the inbound fax is assigned to a particular user, they must use the LAN Fax application to access it (unless e-mail integration is offered). E-Mail Fax Gateways: E-mail fax gateways allow e-mail users to send and receive faxes from their normal e-mail package. The solution may be specific to the e-mail system to which it is attached, may be designed to attach to a messaging backbone to service all e-mail environments, or may be connected to a single mail system but accessible from other e-mail environments (in this latter case, care must be taken to ensure that the addressing and attachment handling available through the gateway between the e-mail environments allows the effective use of the e-mail fax gateway from all e-mail systems). Because fax messaging is integrated directly into the mail system, fax users have no new software to learn and can take advantage of e-mail features such as local folders for filing messages, personal address books and distribution lists, attachments to text messages, support for a mix of operating systems, notification of received messages through a common in-basket, and sending the same message to both e-mail users and fax recipients. The key benefit of e-mail fax gateways to the enterprise is that they leverage the messaging infrastructure, and particularly its operations and management facilities, to make fax available throughout the organization with minimal additional deployment costs. This allows a fax service to be provided for thousands or tens of thousands of users, whereas a single LAN fax solution typically services hundreds of users. Although there is clearly some extra cost to providing the larger number of lines required for a larger population, nevertheless the cost per user of adding fax to an enterprise messaging infrastructure can be significantly lower than that of providing a LAN fax solution (or, more particularly, tens of separate LAN fax solutions for different groups of users). On the other hand, the key drawback to this solution is its dependence on there being an e-mail culture in the organization. If there is a desire to provide faxing from every PC without providing e-mail from every PC, then this may not be an appropriate solution, and either a pure LAN fax solution, or a hybrid solution, will be required. Outsourcing your fax requirements is yet another alternative. There are many fax service providers that provide a wide choice of fax solutions to those organizations that would like to outsource all or part of their fax requirements. Many studies have been conducted to determine the cost of fax technologies to a business, with the annual survey by Gallup/Pitney Bowes being the best known. The cost of fax implementation varies dramatically with the technology being deployed. The general trends indicate that a fax device is available in all mid to large sized companies, as compared to e-mail and voice mail that is present in less than 50% of the same companies Fax is still preferred over telephone, e-mail, voice mail, and overnight mail for delivering urgent information. Part of the attraction, along with the immediacy, is the aspect of confirmation of the message having actually arrived at its destination (at least to the fax machine, if not the user). Fax is the preferred way to deliver documents internationally. Overnight service is unavailable in many parts of the world, making fax more desirable for important documents. Cost is not the primary consideration when sending faxes, and these studies show that the actual cost of generating a letter, posting and mailing it, often is more expensive than sending a fax, especially when that fax is generated by a computer based fax system where no printing or waiting at the fax machine is required. When looking at widespread computer based fax deployment, it should be remembered that all user’s don’t use fax in the same way. Some people send and receive several faxes a day as an essential part of their job - and these "power" fax users are often the most aggressive to deploy fax servers and part of the pilot groups. However, many "average" enterprise employees send only a few faxes a month, and receive hardly any. Generic rules, like "fax lines per employee" are therefore difficult to assess - by far the best guideline most organizations have when planning their deployment is the fax traffic they are sending through their current mechanisms. When attempting to develop a cost model for fax, there are a number of factors that should be considered. Each of these factors can be incorporated into an overall cost model that can provide hard dollar information of the cost associated with operating fax services for an enterprise. These costs can then serve as a baseline when comparing against other communication technologies. Cost factors can be divided into two categories: technology and organization. The technology factors include hardware, software, and infrastructure elements that are utilized in the delivery of fax information. Process factors include organization and communication improvements that will net return on investment dollars. How Much Does Fax Software Really Cost? Fax server software is priced in different ways. Some companies charge per channel, some by client/server user. Please note that for the purposes of this discussion, the terms fax line and channel are interchangeable. Those that sell on a per channel basis often use a 50 user per channel pricing/configuration model. Yet, based on feedback from users, resellers and companies throughout the industry, the actual number of users per channel in deployed systems appeared to be substantially lower than 50, which would have a dramatic negative effect on the ultimate cost of fax software sold per channel. On the other hand, it is likely that the systems already deployed contain an unnaturally high number of "power" users, and the more widespread computer based fax becomes in organizations, the less lines are needed per user. The flip side of this story, of course, is that systems containing a "per user" license fee for desktop software are very competitive for the small number of "power" users, but become increasingly expensive when the vast bulk of corporate users are put on-line. Given these issues, one of the industry's leading independent experts was recently commissioned to perform a study on the subject to enlighten fax users on the basics of channel configuration and help them avoid making costly mistakes. The results of the report clearly indicate that the 50 user paradigm previously recognized as the norm may, in fact, be not be normal during the early stages of fax server deployment - the number of users per channel can be much lower, leading organizations to under configure their servers (and so under-budget for the deployment. The typical industry norm is to assume that on average, and to within an order of magnitude, one fax server line sends one page of fax per minute. Hence within a 10 hour working day, one fax channel sends 600 fax pages. Hence the 50 users per line figure only applies if the average user sends less than 12 pages of fax per day. If they send more, then more lines are needed. If they send less, then less are needed. According to the report, after a fax server is installed and an organization becomes fully aware of all the communications possibilities that fax provides when used in conjunction with other messaging, telephony, and computer technology - the company's fax volume steadily increases. This is especially true if application faxing starts to become common to improve customer relationships. The more that fax server is utilized, the more channels the company will need, and the fewer users per channel it can accommodate. If you have purchased or are planning to purchase a fax server product that is sold by the channel, it is important to realize that the number of channels initially being recommended is not necessarily indicative of your actual needs. And, there may very well be hidden costs associated with a "low" quote which underestimates the number of channels that you will require. The flip side of this argument, of course, is that as more and more less and less frequent fax users are placed on the system, the number of fax lines needed goes down. Similarly if more and more inter-site traffic, and even inter-enterprise traffic, starts to flow by e-mail (as it starts off as electronic documents and PC file formats are standardized), then the number of channels per user starts to decline. In the widespread deployment phase, it can become impractical to cost-justify fax servers charging per user and requiring the installation of desktop software for the vast bulk of occasional fax users. This is where e-mail integration (without desktop software) and volume based pricing really come into their own. To illustrate just how the cost of fax server software sold per channel or per user varies when the volume of traffic per user is taken into account, consider the following illustrations, where an estimate has been made of 50 users per channel, but actual deployment requires 18 (or even as few as 8) users per channel (you can easily repeat this calculation with your number of users, your own predictions of number of users that can be supported per channel, and the costs quoted for different fax servers). Consider a 1,000 user system:
* 8-18 is the range of numbers of users per line in Davidson Consulting study findings. As illustrated above, a system priced at the 50 user per channel configuration would cost $17,900. However, at 18 users per channel, that figure increases to $46,700 (261% of the original budget), and at 8 users per channel, it grows to $101,900 (569% of the original budget). Conversely, the cost of fax server software priced per client/server remains static regardless of the number of channels needed. For example, the cost of the same 1,000 user system when purchased on a client/server basis at $30 per client, would never exceed $30,000. No matter how many channels your system might ultimately demand due to increased usage, the cost per user would remain fixed at $30. The potential cost of a channel-based system does not stop there. As you exceed a certain number of channels per fax server, you would require an additional base server(s), some of which cost as much as $5,000 to $10,000 or more per server. This becomes an issue because many of the Windows NT servers licensed today support as few as 8 lines per server, and few exceed 24, whereas modern Unix based servers can support hundreds of lines. This effect does not apply to systems licensed per-user, unless there is also a per server fee (as a base cost, or for e-mail gateways). Of course if you then want to add another 5,000 users who normally only send one fax each a week, the picture looks somewhat different. This would require $150,000 in per user fees, but may only need 10 extra channels for as little as $8,000 at 50 users/channel (5,000 faxes per week @ 4 pages gives 4,000 pages/day or 400 pages per daytime hour, requiring 7 lines - so to be conservative 10 lines will handle some peaks giving 50 users/channel). Even if they send one fax a day, the software cost is therefore only $40,000. Note that all of these discussions ignore volume discounts. How Many Lines Does My Fax Server Need? Buyers need a firm grasp of number of users and fax phone line capacity issues, to ensure that there initial budget estimates are not based on specifying fax servers that are under-equipped with lines, or priced only for the pilot number of users. These mistakes can make the wrong solution look the most cost effective, and does a disservice to customers who get less than expected performance at the budgeted price. Buyers may be left with the dilemma of either going over budget, taking out the fax server and starting over again, or settling for sub par performancefor meeting their fax dissemination needs, which translates into sub par performance in meeting customer service needs. This section is intended to give buyers enough understanding of sizing factors so that they can make informed purchase decisions in order to protect themselves from unwelcome price/performance tradeoff surprises. Although some rough industry averages exist as to how many fax server users can effectively share a line — e.g., 7 to 50 active fax users per line — optimal ratios of users to lines depends on, and varies widely according to, numerous site-specific factors. When building a total cost of procurement model, the needs of different user groups have to be taken into account. The most aggressive adopters of computer based fax, in procurement, sales and marketing, may generate much higher levels of demand than the bulk of middle management, operations and shop floor staff. So the first step for a buyer isfor them to understand their customers . Site-specific factors include how many pages of fax traffic users generate, peak-hour traffic volumes, fax board/server efficiency, acceptable levels of queue delay, the level of traffic that can be shifted to low-cost off peak transmission, whether inbound as well as outbound fax traffic is supported, and how much new fax traffic will the existence of a fax server create? The best data points that a buyer has in assessing their fax server needs is the number of fax machines currently deployed for that population, and the percentage of time those machines are busy (this information can often be obtained from PBX records or telephone bills). This provides an upper limit for the current traffic profiles, with the total number of minutes of in-use time across all of the lines being the key metric (providing the selected fax server is able to spread all of the traffic across all of the lines available to it). If inbound and outbound traffic can be separated at this stage, that is very valuable since the line usage models for each type of traffic are very different. Too few lines can result in delayed communications, lost opportunities and lost sales due to inbound faxes that never get through. Too many lines may cause businesses to incur some unnecessary expenditures, but having ample capacity ensures timely transmissions, deals with peak demands, allows broadcast faxing to be done in-house, and provides room to grow as fax traffic volumes increase. The next task in determining fax server line capacity needs comes down not only to identifying or estimating current fax traffic levels, but also estimating what percentage of that traffic will move to the fax server. In addition, consideration must be given to:
The number of fax server phone lines to install is one of the most difficult assessments fax server buyers must make. Ultimately, this becomes an issue that hinges on the usage patterns of the users of each individual fax server installation. Although some rough industry averages exist — 12 to 20 users per line for many current users of LAN fax servers (according to Davidson Consulting) — they may be either ill-suited or just too vague to be applied successfully to some specific fax server installations. It is vital that buyers get a basic understanding of the level of fax traffic they need to support for the various user populations they intend to put online - and don’t forget any application faxing planned. Only in that way can they avoid accepting an unrealistically low quote compared to what they will end up paying. Some businesses utilize multiple phone lines for each user due to performing large broadcast fax jobs. Some businesses can share 1 line between 50 or more. Davidson Consulting generally does not recommend sharing a line among more than 25 serious fax users. Given the potential variances, the number of lines needed for each fax server should be assessed according to factors specific to each business, department and/or work group that the fax server will support, including:
Although, in most cases, VARs, systems integrators or fax server vendors will analyze the factors at work relative to specific installations and then make recommendations, buyers are still advised to understand and scrutinize fax server sizing dynamics well enough to assess whether the number of ports recommended is realistic, given the needs of the buyer's business. Although line capacity can be managed and optimized after the initial implementation of a fax server, within the scalability features of the selected fax server (and businesses must understand that situations arise where well-intentioned sizing estimates miss the mark, not least because well designed services generate additional traffic, and post-installation adjustments must be made), the business will ultimately pay a price of installing too many or too few fax server phone lines. If too few lines are installed, typical results include:
As it becomes clear that additional lines are needed, businesses must install new lines, which means additional installation costs may impact normal business operations during the time the fax server is being upgraded. If too many lines are installed, typical results include:
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