Looking Back at Changes to the Fax Industry in 2007

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TMCnet asked Michael Mullany, Chief Product Officer at RingCentral, to provide some perspective on the fax industry. RingCentral provides an online suite of on-demand communications tools for small businesses – including phone and fax.

TMCnet: How would you define “fax,” and how is that different (if indeed it is) from how the term might have been defined a year ago?

MM: We see fax as a communications technology merging into voice and mobile communications. People continue to shift to fax via email, and fax machines themselves are becoming just one of the functions of all-in-one fax software. The standalone fax machine is truly a thing of the past.

TMCnet: What were some of the 2007 highlights for RingCentral?

MM: In September 2007, Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures completed a financing round of $12 million with RingCentral. Our customer acquisition surpassed 45,000 small businesses. The paying customer base has more than doubled in the past year.

On October 9, 2007, RingCentral introduced DigitalLine, a Voice over Internet Protocol VoIP service that adds the convenience and cost savings of Internet-based telephony to its virtual phone system. With DigitalLine, RingCentral delivers a complete hosted solution for small businesses; customers can use a mix of traditional land line, mobile and VoIP communications to place and receive calls.

Unlike other VoIP services, RingCentral DigitalLine does not require small businesses to rely solely on VoIP. As part of every basic service plan, DigitalLine enables customers to receive calls over the Internet at no additional cost. Small businesses can experience the savings and convenience of RingCentral DigitalLine VoIP and determine if the service is a fit for them, risk free. Through a service upgrade, customers receive a complete phone service allowing them to both receive and place calls over the Internet using a softphone,phone or traditional phone using an analog telephony adapter (ATA).

TMCnet: How do you place those highlights in the broader fax market?

MM: I think the highlights outlined above speak to the continued erosion of the traditional device-based fax market in favor of Internet-based faxing.

TMCnet: If you had to pick one event or development that occurred during 2007 that had an impact on the fax market, what would it be?

MM: There wasn’t a single event during the year; rather, the evolution of fax into a feature of unified communications (versus a standalone product) continued apace. If anything, the industry consolidation toward the end of the year is a sign of that migration.

TMCnet: In terms of technology, what changes did you see during 2007 for the fax market?

MM: Wireless PC cards had an impact on the both the Internet fax market and fax usage during 2007, particularly in the real estate and appraisal industries. Agents who usually carry laptops in the field now can sign documents electronically and fax them to their clients. This is also true with other mobile professionals.

TMCnet: In terms of business practices, what changes did you see during 2007 for the fax market?

MM: Fax remains a critical tool for small businesses. We are continuing to see its importance in a wide array of industries from real estate to online retail to professional services. Although “scan and email” is developing into a viable customer alternative, fax will continue to be a critical business tool.

TMCnet: Looking broadly at all the customer feedback RingCentral received during 2007, what trends do you see emerging?

MM: RingCentral recently conducted a survey of its small business customers, examining trends in technology spending, holiday plans and more. The survey results underscore the importance of fax for small business communications. The majority of respondents, 57 percent, identified fax as important or very important for conducting business.

TMCnet: Looking ahead to 2008, what changes do you predict for the fax market—both in terms of technology and business practices?

MM: The RingCentral customer survey revealed that the majority of small businesses (60 percent) will increase technology spending in 2008. More than a third of small businesses plan to spend on phone systems, smart-phones and Voice over IP (VoIP) technologies. Currently, 40 percent of survey participants use VoIP technology with an additional 38 percent planning to adopt VoIP technology in 2008.

Fax, phone and email will continue to be critical communication tools for small businesses, but they will also increase use of social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. (Our prediction, based on survey results, is that use of social networking sites will increase from 28 percent, the 2007 figure, to 59 percent in 2008.)

Additionally, 34 percent of respondents currently use click-to-call technology on their Web sites and in their email signatures to facilitate communication with customers; an additional 41 percent are planning to adopt this technology in 2008. 

RingCentral Fax is Your Fax Solution

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Businesses know Fax by Internet solves financial worries. With an online fax service, not only will your business get a dedicated fax number you just need the ability to get online, and the provider takes care of everything else.

RingCentral Fax is a complete fax service for your business with advanced features not available elsewhere. This service lets you send and receive faxes using e-mail or the online RingCentral interface; you can even fax directly from Word, Excel, Outlook and other desktop programs.

Internet Fax includes a toll-free or local number and is always available. You never have to wait for a fax to arrive or send, and your callers will never get a busy signal. The service also includes free Internet fax software to electronically sign and edit faxes, and to create custom cover pages.

RingCentral Fax, a leading Internet fax solution provider is equipped with the faxing plans to fit the needs of any sized business. RingCentral Fax gives you a dedicated fax number for your incoming faxes, in addition to getting your faxes via email.

Fax via Internet is always available, so you will never miss an important fax. Since you can view and edit faxes on the website, and RingCentral Fax saves your business even more money because you don’t need to have a printer.

Online fax service is a cost effective way to have all of the benefits of a traditional fax machine without any of the aggravation. As long as you have access to the Internet, you can send and receive faxes to anyone in the world.

RingCentral Fax even sends you a message on your mobile phone if you get a new fax. Or, if you need to send an important fax to multiple recipients, you can do this with the RingCentral broadcast fax feature. With RingCentral, the possibilities are endless!

Go ahead and take advantage of their 30-day free trial, you have nothing to lose. Break free from that fax machine in your office and go online with your faxing service.

Berard: Virtualized fax cuts costs

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In data centers around the world, the traditional reality of one application per server is changing. Pressures to cut costs and streamline operations have brought organizations face to face with the expense and difficulty of managing a constantly growing number of machines running different applications and operating systems, often with different database requirements. Data centers are running out of space for all of the servers acquired over the years, yet hardware is underutilized and disaster recovery is complicated. Energy costs are skyrocketing and server administration expenses keep rising.
Ironically, some of the best steps small and medium-sized business can take to improve operations can actually contribute to these problems. Automating core business processes with solutions like fax servers produces huge gains in efficiency and sustainability by helping organizations quit paper. But process automation also generates massive amounts of data to be stored, backed up and recovered – which means more hardware and associated costs. And the need to power and maintain all the machines to handle that data presents a challenge to green business initiatives.
Taking migration to IP a step further
This paradox may explain in part why sales of Internet-based fax server solutions are growing at a rate of more than 50 percent, according to fax industry analyst Davidson Consulting, gaining predominance over conventional fax board-based solutions. Together with the emergence of virtualization software products like VMware, Hyper-V and Xen as valuable tools to run multiple applications and boost hardware utilization, Fax over IP provides the means for completely virtualized fax systems, and it addresses the expense of line charges and other costs associated with public switched telephone network infrastructures.
Virtualization coordinates access to a single piece of hardware, like a server computer, so that multiple guest applications (including fax server software) can share the hardware without interfering with each other. Fax server solutions can seamlessly be implemented in a virtual machine environment without hardware by integrating fax with Voice over IP networks.
Fax virtualization offers organizations significant benefits of increased efficiency and cost control in hardware utilization, data center resource management, energy consumption, administration and disaster recovery. Working with its fax server customers, Esker has found that virtualization typically reduces costs associated with fax operations by as much as 40 percent. Running fewer servers means less capital expense. And with virtualized fax there is no need for downtime during system maintenance, helping ensure business continuity.
Going boardless
FoIP enables organizations to take advantage of fax virtualization benefits without the need for fax hardware. Fax software such as Dialogic Brooktrout SR140 leverages VoIP architectures to fax-enable users and applications, providing FoIP capabilities by integrating fax technology with IP networks. Fax servers that play well with the SR140 technology thrive in the virtualized environment because there are no hardware dependencies and the fax server solution can be enabled on every workstation with no additional costs.
To address the expense and inefficiency of traditional faxing, fax server solutions leverage boardless fax technology and virtual machine software environments to offer compelling cost and administration time savings.
Success factors
SMBs moving to a virtualized fax server solution have several key factors to consider. First, traditional fax boards do not support virtualization. Companies need to make sure their fax servers have been tested with virtualization software components. And although virtualization reduces the amount of administrative work necessary for hardware, it will not make the need for system administration go away. System administration is still required for guest operating systems, which makes it important for the fax server to provide versatile capabilities for management and reporting. Also, applications may have multiple machines that need to access the same data. For example, an SAP customer master database is accessed by SAP applications as well as the fax server software and other business systems. This underscores the need for a fully capable fax server.
When these considerations are taken into account, fax server virtualization offers SMBs the potential to improve reaction time, provide a cost-effective means of disaster recovery preparedness, dramatically reduce network administrative costs, support sustainability and deliver significant cost savings.

eFax Messenger Now Available for Windows 7

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eFax(R) announced today compatibility of its free eFax Messenger Internet fax application with Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 7 32-bit, 64-bit, and Vista 64-bit operating systems. eFax Messenger makes it easy to create, annotate, sign, send, and print faxes from any computer. eFax is a brand of j2 Global Communications, Inc. and an Internet fax to email service with over 11 million customers worldwide.
The new OS versions now make eFax Messenger available for Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Windows 2000 32-bit operating systems, as well as Mac(R) 32-bit operating systems. eFax Messenger is a tried and tested Internet fax software that gives users full-featured fax management via a user-friendly interface. Among its many features, eFax Messenger allows faxes to be sent, viewed, and printed directly from within the application. In addition, fax history, drafts, and sent faxes can be easily viewed and referenced.
“eFax Messenger has proven to be a popular application for extending eFax’s functionality beyond basic online sending and receiving of faxes,” said Mike Pugh, vice president, marketing, j2 Global, Inc. “The ability to mark an online fax with an ‘approved’ or ‘received’ stamp, or with a customized stamp like your own signature, really makes a difference when working in a mobile environment or going green.”
eFax is a pioneer in the fax business, with a string of technology and business firsts dating back to 1988. The company’s global network recently grew to 3,500 cities worldwide, on six continents.

A Reseller Educational Series: Getting Ready for 2010

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Large corporations generally have their 2010 business plans in place by early December. Resellers and small- to medium-sized vendors are usually too busy closing year-end business to finalize their plans before January. However, there are some tasks that should be started now.

Begin with a quick assessment of 2009. Revenue numbers through the third quarter should provide an adequate year-end projection. Purchasing patterns have changed from 2008 as companies still have a recession mindset. Nonetheless, your company can be a 2010 winner with a first-rate strategy in place to overcome this challenge.

Next, identify which product lines had increased or decreased revenue in 2009 and endeavor to ascertain the reasons. For example, were customers shifting from legacy products to newer technologies such as moving to Dialogic

Brooktrout SR140 fax software from traditional fax boards? This type of assessment is critical to determining where to allocate your resources for 2010.

Retaining customers is imperative and selling add-on products or migrating customers to the latest technology (as in the SR140 example) is a first-rate retention strategy. Support is a high-margin profit center so renewing agreements is critical. Track these trends for 2009 and make adjustments accordingly. Sometimes giving a small commission to your support engineers is a more efficient method than limiting renewals and upgrades to your sales team. Support calls provide an easy transition for an engineer to say “Your support agreement is about to expire, would you like to renew now?”

Landing on your feet running in January is imperative, so put

ITEXPO East from Jan. 20 through 22 in Miami on your calendar. Attendance for this year’s conference was 8,309, a 15.5 percent increase over 2008, which makes this event a proven winner. Check out the exhibitors list in advance and schedule times to see the new products you are evaluating. And don’t forgetter Reseller Day for the free reseller conference sessions.