Fax Isn't Dead, It's Just Different

Things change; the protagonist of your favorite TV show may be killed off mid-season, the weather changes with the seasons, and today, forms of communication change just as quickly as rumors circulate about Facebook’s (News - Alert) security policies.

This certainly applies when considering fax technology. To the surprising dismay of many who think fax has been boldly branded by its antiquity and discrepancies, it continues to transform, adjust and revolutionize. Fax became a point of interest in the 1960s when the U.S. Army transmitted the first photograph via satellite fax to Puerto Rico. The technology didn’t go completely mainstream, however, until 1964, when Xerox introduced what many perceive as the first ever version of the standard fax machine.

Since then, as mentioned, things have inevitably changed to accommodate today’s modern times. As widespread conversions from traditional telephony to IP-based systems commenced, things seemed to hit a large speed bump for fax, which made many wonder how it would survive these important technological changes.

TMC’s (News - Alert) Mae Kowalke reported about one basic reason fax remains so realized, as elaborated by AudioCodes’ Director of Market Development Alan Percy (News - Alert). “With certain vertical industries, there are requirements for digital signatures and legally binding documents,” he explains, citing the real estate, legal and government as a sampling of industries that heavily require these types of services to complete everyday business. “There is not a ubiquitous alternative service,” he says, and until there is, fax is here to stay.

Quentin Dible of FaxSIPit agrees, having explained in a related webinar that “the fax machine is still the easiest scan-to-send device out there.”

First, fax changed in the form of a paper to electronic document transmission, and now, it’s in the form of Fax over IP, or FoIP, a market which is expected to grow to $415 million in 2014 from $130 million back in 2009 – representing a 26.1 percent CAGR in a short five years.

Things can encounter problems as they change, but that hasn’t stopped fax from further developing to rise above. “What’s really needed is a way to connect physical fax machines to services from fax server providers,” Kowalke writes.

This problem is solved in a solution offered from AudioCodes (News - Alert) and FaxSIPit, which combines AudioCodes’ Fax ATA and FaxSIPit’s FaxCONNECTit service as a bridge between the fax machine and any cloud fax server. All of fax’s complicated aftermath is obliterated with this package, as it successfully eliminates the need for dedicated, non-integrated fax machine lines, thus allowing companies to finally go all-IP without losing the trusted benefits of fax. By relying on the HTTPS protocol, users can also consolidate fax through a single account, thus providing true security without packet loss.

To learn more about FaxSIPit’s offerings, visit www.faxsipit.com.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.