The future of fax in converging data and voice networks

Many companies are currently either implementing or considering projects to converge data and voice networks. With “Voice over IP” (VoIP) a mature technology is available for this purpose form several suppliers, and the benefits of this approach are obvious including significant cost reductions with regard to hardware, software, maintenance and administration.

At the same time fax remains an important media for business communication but is still transmitted and received through the traditional telephone network. Sooner or later a question pops up in most companies migrating voice to IP but who have significant fax traffic: “Do we really have to keep this island of phone lines, PABX, fax machines and fax boards for the fax service?”

The answer to this question is definitely – “no”. With MessagePlus/Open you can seamlessly migrate your fax traffic to an IP based infrastructure avoiding any migration risks. Based on the T.38 protocol for Fax over IP in real-time, MessagePlus/Open provides the same degree of reliability and scalability for Fax over IP as you are used to having with traditional phone lines. The MessagePlus/Open Fax over IP solution is compatible with all  T.38 – T.30 gateways and systems such as CISCO Unified Communication Manager, Avaya Communication Manager, Nortel Communication Server and others.

Fax over IP with MessagePlus/Open does not require fax boards anymore. It is a pure software based solution communicating through a standard TCP/IP connection. Beside the savings you realize, a major benefit of this solution is that you can deploy the complete system in virtualized environments – something that has not been possible as long as special fax hardware was required. You can find more information about Fax over IP and the MessagePlus/Open implementation of this protocol in the following document.