Got VoIP? What did you forget to add…
The Top “5” biggest mistakes after converting to VoIP, and I’ll bet your company is making them all. So what are they, you ask
- Did you keep analog fax lines to run your fax machines?
- Have you chosen not to integrate the phones with your everyday applications?
- Have you failed to invest in simple point-to-point video, in this “you-tube” enabled workforce?
- Did you combine all of the features listed above into a strategic unified collaboration vision?
- Last but not least, did you educate your users, to increase the adoption rate, increase communications proficiency and boost productivity?
I live in the Cisco Reseller world and I see these 5 mistakes repeated in almost every-one of my clients. Most likely you just dismissed me as a sales person. I am not. I am the Unified Collaboration Practice lead and a Senior Voice Engineer. I spent over 12 years working as a Microsoft Trainer/Consultant on the entire Back-office suite of products, from SQL to SMS, Web Development, Exchange and CRM. So, why the background information, you may ask? Well I believe that we, as a business community, are so busy upgrading to the latest and greatest applications from each vendor that we do not stop to integrate the applications together to achieve the normal justification for new software in the first place, increased proficiency and productivity. I’ve decided to do something about it. I have made it my mission to take my one little corner of the world’s technology real estate and begin to explain to the CxO’s and Budget Managers why it makes sense to slow down and build an IT infrastructure to promote productivity and proficiency in the rest of the business. I would like to help identify where those budget dollars would be better spent in the long run. This first article will deal with the number “1” biggest mistake that I see most every adopter of VoIP make, the failure to convert their Faxing infrastructure at the same time as they convert the Voice infrastructure.
What are some of the common reasons cited for not making the change?
- We have a large investment in our legacy fax machines
- I’ve heard FoIP is not reliable, and Faxes get dropped
- My users will revolt if I try to change the way they fax.
- Networks designed for VoIP can’t handle the new fax machine signaling speeds
- Our vendor did not recommend it.
- It was one more expense we couldn’t afford
This is a short list, but it is the list I hear most often recited to me from clients and potential clients. We should start this discussion by simply stating that 2 years ago, these were valid issues, even 18 months ago these might have been valid issues, but today EVERYONE who has VoIP should be looking into converting their Faxing Infrastructure to FoIP. So what has really changed? There really hasn’t been any magic, just simple market based economics. Let’s take each reason listed above one by one, shall we.
First, let’s deal with the large investment in legacy fax machines. This really impacts the End User issues as well as the reliability concerns, but I’ll get to those points later. Historically, when FoIP was implemented it involved the following setup that looked something like this;
A Fax machine from outside of ACME Corp, would call the fax number for ACME Corp and the call would be routed to ACME Corp’s Voice Gateway from the Public Switched Telephone Network, or Ma BELL. ACME Corps brand new VoIP phone system would then use an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) to convert the Digital call from Ethernet (Digital) to an RJ-11 (Standard Analog Phone Jack). That works for both inbound and outbound faxing, some of the time. Issues did arise with the standard protocols for handling Fax-pass through and Fax-forwarding. T.30 is the standard for Fax to Fax communication, T.38 is the standard for Fax to Fax over IP and T.37 is the standard for sending a fax-image file via email to the intended recipient of a fax. So where did this setup fail ACME Corp? Well the ATA most likely did not fully support the T.38 protocol. That issue would present itself many ways the most common of which is that most faxes would work fine, but when ACME Corps, legal firm ZED Lawyers, inc purchased a new fax machine that operated faster than 14.4 KBPS then their faxes would not get through. Constant troubleshooting would ensue, lost revenue, communication and productivity made the solution very quickly a losing proposition. To fix this problem Fax Vendors, who have been offering network based Fax Servers, entered the FoIP Market and learned to connect their Fax Server Software to the Voice Gateways via trunking protocols like SIP with T.38 riding on top. So now everyone could Fax from their Desktop applications and receive their individual faxes in their email inbox. By putting the server in the middle which fully supports T.37 and T.38 they have solved the reliability issue and the tuning issue, but they left us Presales engineer with what they call and opportunity and what I call a problem. ELF, Existing Legacy Fax machines, legacy employees are comfortable with their fax machines, and let’s face it some documents need to be faxed, due to signatures. The opportunity was to sell self feeding scanners or network enabled document imaging stations, instead I looked for someone who had solved the problem. I found that several companies had done just that. Here is how it was done; 
ACME Corp.s Fax Servers now support FoIP directly so they only need to tune the T.38 protocol once for the inbound and outbound connection to the Voice Gateway that is connected to the PSTN. ACME Corp has gained the ability to have the inbound faxes delivered directly to your inbox, thereby increasing end user productivity. Next, the vendors dealt with the ELFs by adding what I call an ELF proxy, a very simple application that sits on a client machine and fully supports T.38 and connects to the fax server. What was the missing piece? The missing piece was an ATA that fully supports T.38 and can be configured to point to ACME Corps ELF Proxy. Once T.38 is tuned between the new ATA’s and the ELF Proxy, and then from the Fax Server to the Voice Gateway, our vendors have solved several of ACME Corps issues.
- Number 1, can ACME Corp continue to use its Existing Legacy Fax machines?
- Number 2, have we fixed the reliability issues regarding the T.30, T.38, and T.37 Tuning and speed deltas?
- Yes, we now can reliably send and receive faxes 99% of the time
- Number 3, can users continue to do business as normal?
- Yes, ACME should begin the process of updating equipment that is network based and natively supports FoIP for Document management if Faxing continues to be a critical business infrastructure driver but we have bought them time to do it at their pace and still enjoy the benefits of fax convergence
- Number 4, can a Network designed for VoIP handle fax sensitive protocols?
- Yes, Experience pays off during the design process, the right partner will make your FoIP implementation a success
- .Number 5, our vendor did not recommend it…
- I hope you can understand why they might have shied away from it, most partners are implementers and not integrators so margin is made by how quickly they can turn and burn a project. Finding the right partner is the key.
- Number 6, it was one more expense we couldn’t add to the project…
- To address this line you have to begin to consider the ROI
- The actual cost of a Fax Server is the cost of the Software, the hardware and the labor to implement it.
- The Software and maintenance will range between $3,000 and $9,000
- The Server Hardware will range between $2,500 and $12,000 (your choice on that one…Oh yeah it can be virtualized as well, VMWare anyone?)
- Implementation costs will vary depending on size of the implementation, number of locations and regions. However the actual server install and the base configuration will normally take between 2 days to a week.
- You stop paying for the separate Analog lines being retained specifically for the Fax Machines.
- You stop having to manage the separate bills at the end of the month
- You log each inbound and outbound fax at the fax server for centralized management and billing§ Archive all sent faxes for legal record keeping in digital format
- Receive Email notification as a receipt for sent faxes
- Begin the increase in productivity by training the users to receive their faxes in their inbox so that they can read them without disrupting their thought process to check for incoming faxes.
- Faxes received in email can be read from any location where they can get their mail, making the weekend trip into the office to retrieve a fax no longer a requirement.
If you have invested in a VoIP Enterprise solution and you have not yet centralized on an Enterprise FoIP solution, don’t wait any longer. The technology is there and it is sound. For the sake of brevity I did not even discuss the advantages for large corporations to send Faxes, Fax server to Fax Server via the WAN utilizing HTTP encrypted using SSL. My call to action for you is to get your VoIP partner on the phone and ask them to help you get FoIP in your environment today.
Please join my rant next week as I rant about the lack of Collaboration deployment with the existing applications already in your workplace.
Daniel Stephens is a Senior Voice Engineer and the Unified Collaboration Practice lead for Presidio Network Solutions, Mid-Atlantic Region. He has had over 20 years of Executive level experience in Technology and Business management. If you have questions or comments he can be reached at dstephens@presidio.com.
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