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 Computer Telephony for the Enterprise |
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FAX SERVERS
Fax servers represent the final application area for discussion in this chapter. For many organizations, fax traffic is a large but hidden cost. One Pitney Bowes research study suggested that fax makes up 40 percent of long-distance telephony charges--and, because of the shared nature of the fax machine, it is very difficult to trace usage back to an individual. Imagine being identified as the person who helped cut fax costs in half through simple management initiatives! An architectured fax server implementation permits such manageability through three initiatives: by being able to track originating faxes to an individual; by migrating fax traffic from the switched carrier network to either your internal WAN backbone, a dedicated fax network or the internet; and finally by using least-cost routing algorithms and delivery services. For end users, a fax server implementation simplifies outbound fax tasks by allowing direct faxing from a de sktop productivity application, cutting out the wasted time involved in the printing-signing-dialing-waiting process for paper faxing.
Working towards the implementation of a fax server infrastructure requires consideration of three major issues:
Finally, prepare for the near-term future with an eye towards fax over IP networks. Both the IETF and the ITU-T have working groups working way on standards for IP fax, and most fax vendors are actively promoting their fax over IP solutions. If your company is standardizing on IP for data networking, why not include fax in the mix and get the benefits of a single network backbone for all internal traffic?
Deployment Issues
A key factor for consideration in the analysis phase of any computer telephony project is the carefully planned product features that reduce life-cycle administration time (and, therefore, cost). These features derive their origin either from direct vendor development, or a third-party developer. For example, Novell shops running NDS should look for products that integrate with the user- and administration-information contained therein, either via proprietary links or the LDAP. As mentioned above, the CallWare voice mail product from CallWare Technologies has i ntegration with NDS as a feature, as does Octel Unified Messenger with the NT Directory Services for Exchange Server integration. If your organization has standardized on an enterprisewide network management tool, ensure there is integration with the new stuff. One thing that always impressed me with the Hewlett-Packard Co. OpenMail e-mail system was its integration with HP OpenView for management. Knowing before the event that the product with the highest upfront cost has the lowest total cost of ownership given its ability to integrate with all your existing systems will probably have significant bearing on your final product decision!
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Implementing a fax server requires a new server with the appropriate number of fax ports (see below), a connection into the Internet and/or the carrier network for off-premises fax delivery, and client software for each end user.
