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Bridging The Gap Via IP Fax BY
JUSTIN SMITH
Despite opinions to the contrary, old technologies never die. Instead,
they continue to grow in importance and both direct and indirect
influence, even in the face of lost novelty. Fax, like book printing and,
in fact, all hardcopy document generation, is an "old"
technology that continues to grow. Thanks to the ascendancy of IP-based
networking and the .tif electronic fax file format, fax is no longer tied
exclusively to the hard-copy document generation. On the contrary, fax
often bridges the gap in important socio-economic interactions that now
require both hardcopy and electronic document distribution, particularly
when distribution requirements cannot be anticipated in advance.
With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that fax continues to
grow both in terms of adoption (it is estimated that up to 80 percent of
commercial sites do not yet have even a rudimentary LAN fax server
capability) and total pages transmitted. As a result, its influence on
related technologies, increasingly inter-related technology
"bundles" (i.e. "convergence"), and associated
converged application market development also continues to grow.
WHY FAX IS STILL IMPORTANT
Fax isn't going away any faster than paper is going away. For decades,
corporate soothsayers have been predicting something called "the
paperless office." Truth be told, we deal with more paper than ever
before. It is true that the core of each new business process introduced
or converted to a Web interface tends to depend less and less on paper and
more and more on Web technology, that particular paper-reducing effect
tends to be outweighed by the sheer volume of transaction growth.
Transactions are growing at such a staggering pace that older paper-based
processes get pulled along.
Fax is also still the chosen (and sometimes required) means of
transmission for documents such as legal contracts, invoices, and so on.
One of the little-known secrets of e-commerce is that many of the back
office operations and behind-the-scenes order fulfillment processes
transpiring between e-commerce companies and their suppliers and partners
are still very much fax-based. Behind a single Web-based consumer purchase
may lurk three or four faxes.
Although many core transaction processes are becoming paperless, many
peripheral processes remain stubbornly paper-oriented. For example, we may
book concert tickets online, but hardcopy proof of the transaction (the
tickets), is still required for admission to the concert. When we place
orders for products over the Web, typically we print a hardcopy of the
transaction receipt, including lengthy order-tracking numbers, for our
records. Even when we book "electronic" airline tickets, the
wise traveler usually prints out a hardcopy of the travel itinerary
originally e-mailed to them by their travel agent. When we return home
from a business trip, we submit paper receipts as proof of our travel
expenses. Thanks to the security risks inherent with electronic systems,
this situation is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
NEW MESSAGING APPLICATIONS
Precisely because fax straddles the gulf between electronic and hardcopy
transactions, we find that fax lies at the heart of new electronic
messaging systems. Unified messaging applications, call center
applications, and the like retain fax capabilities, at least as a
back-stop to other, more cutting-edge Web and digital voice
recording-based processes.
Yet fax isn't thought of as a sexy technology. To do fax right, with
high rates of reliability (i.e. first-attempt connection success, call
completion, optimal-throughput) is not as easy as many technology
providers think. Customers, meanwhile, expect any unified messaging
application (to name just one example of converged communications
applications), to include a robust faxing capability. How often have we
heard end-users say, "It isn't unified messaging if it doesn't do
fax."
Because fax, the "old" technology, often gets the least
attention when tying together converged applications, it is frequently the
weakest link in the converged communications chain. Occasionally, this
sine qua non of converged messaging can even lead to a customer's
rejection of an entire converged application.
WHAT ABOUT IP?
On a parallel path, as we all know IP is fast becoming the de facto
standard, without an apparent peer, for all kinds of digitized content
distribution, whether underpinning the public data network, private
(managed) data networks, or corporate or site-specific networks. Most
industry observers expect some evolved form of IP packet switching to
gradually supplant all circuit switching in the PSTN and elsewhere.
It is true that competing (or otherwise complementary) ATM technology
lies at the core of many high-bandwidth switching systems and at the heart
of many carrier networks, but the dream of end-to-end Quality of Service
(QoS) capabilities based on ATM may never be fully realized due to the
high cost of equipping end stations. In the meantime, IP continues to
evolve as an all-purpose transport technology without being encumbered by
specific ties to high-cost hardware at the end points of the transaction.
Twenty-five years from now, the familiar LAN vs. WAN technology
distinctions, which were ultimately based on differences in underlying
transmission technology and available bandwidth, will no longer apply. It
will be impossible to distinguish between public and private networking on
the basis of the underlying switching technology used.
Just as IP is evolving to transform the basis of all networks, public
and private, fax in its own way serves as a common denominator for
converged messaging applications. Together, the two technologies will
exert an influence on each other and on other messaging types and
communication media in the evolution of both public and private networks
and associated converged communications applications. As fax is tied to
IP, it will also bring along other message types to IP-based networks and
associated applications, and vice versa.
WHAT ABOUT FAX OVER IP?
Ironically, technologies often reach the zenith of their influence at
precisely the point when their universality becomes either old news or
otherwise undetectable to the end user. To a degree, this has already
transpired with fax over IP (FoIP) and voice over IP (VoIP) technologies.
The early impetus behind FoIP and VoIP implementations as a means for
individuals, small businesses, and enterprises to by-pass high telco
tariff rates has largely faded, especially in the United States, because
long-distance rates have come down substantially. This has happened for a
number of reasons, including the advent of FoIP and VoIP technologies
themselves. Thanks to reduced telco rates, the savings associated with
classical FoIP and VoIP are no longer substantial enough for the average,
already overwhelmed IT department to bother overcoming the
not-insubstantial technical hurdles associated with rolling out a
satisfactory system.
As a result, real-time FoIP implementations have largely become a
non-issue. However, this does not mean that FoIP is unimportant. In fact,
it means the opposite. Fax is now an indispensable part of larger
messaging systems.
Meanwhile, the flexibility of IP in enabling any kind of messaging type
has simply stolen the show. Fax service providers, for example, no longer
concentrate on providing fax services, but on providing IP based services
of all kinds.
This second phase of development, when FoIP and VoIP technologies
become inextricably linked with the underlying public networks and service
providers, will pave the way for a future phase of IP and IP-based
application adoption in the enterprise. The on ramps for enterprises to
link their in-house IP messaging systems are being built now. And as we
have seen already, corporations will be unwilling to outsource their most
sensitive communications functions. Hence, we will always see a mix of
both hosted and in-house applications.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND FAX
Although recent adjustments in the financial sector have reduced near-term
development prospects for the telecom sector, mobile computing,
communications, and technologies that enable various devices to interact
with each other, will continue to evolve.
For example, imagine the opportunities for faxing opened up by handheld
devices. The occasional need for hardcopies in addition to exact
electronic reproductions provided by electronic .tif files will always be
with us. What will we do when we receive a fax as a .tif file in our
unified messaging in-box accessible from our mobile phone, but our screen
is either too small to view the document, or we are speaking to someone
who is not equipped with a similar device or service, but would like to
provide them with a hardcopy of the fax?
Handheld messaging services will naturally create additional need for
the occasional, or perhaps even frequent, hardcopy print out. If we can
forward the fax received from our mobile phone handset to a nearby fax
machine, either via the public network or via other, local peer-to-peer
wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, our need is satisfied.
CONCLUSION
All in all, the dynamic, self-reinforcing interplay between and evolution
of the various networks, media, and messaging types that exist today will
create a world of opportunity for end-users, corporate IT departments, and
service providers alike. The next 25 years should be very interesting. And
some evolved form of fax technology will still remain with us as an
integral and necessary part of communications systems.
Justin Smith is product marketing manager for Brooktrout Technology.
For more information, please visit www.brooktrout.com.
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