Inbox/Outbox integrations:
E-mail: SMTP/POP3, Microsoft Mail, Exchange/Outlook,
Lotus Notes, Lotus cc:Mail, Novell GroupWise, Novell MHS SMF 70/71.
Voicemail:
Siemens’ Xpressions 470, Telekol, Lucent’s Octel, and Intersis’ Voixx.
IP enabled:
Yes, with partners UUNET, GTE, and Concord, and server-to-server directly.
Pricing: MSRP is $45 per client license, $995 per server,
$49.95 for FACSys’ Exchange Connector (unlimited number of
users).
How best to buy:
FACSys Authorized Resellers.
Fax service bureau relationships:
Premiere/Xpedite and Graphnet.
Optus Software, Inc. (Somerset, NJ — 732-271-9568) introduced
FACSys in the LAN marketplace in 1990. Native integration with
Exchange, being rolled out globally by Microsoft, provides FACSys
with an Outlook-like appearance and support for double-byte (read:
Asian-language) characters. Rich Text Format (RTF) messages created
in Asian Exchange clients can now be rendered on the sending side,
ensuring full font and format support.
FACSys’ Least Cost Routing looks at a wide range of parameters
— dial strings, message properties or connection costs —
to automatically route faxes to other fax servers or service bureaus,
via Internet, Intranet or PSTN.
Optus provides uninterrupted support programs through IBM Global
Services. Optus can also give users fax and e-mail transmission
capabilities without requiring installation and distribution of
the full FACSys desktop client. Finally, its Active Fax Messaging
(AFM) development kit lets network administrators fax-enable all
kinds of preexisting business applications with an ActiveX-like
ease.
Tobit Software
Product Name:
FaxWare5.2
Average Size of Installation:
four ports, 50 desktops.
Hardware Supported:
Class 2 modems, ISDN boards, intelligent fax cards and serial boards.
Routing options:
DID, ISDN, CSID, line routing, manual
routing.
Inbox/Outbox integrations: Any SMTP-based e-mail package
and Microsoft Exchange. Tobit also makes David, its own unified
messaging server, for integration with voice mail and e-mail.
IP enabled:
Yes, with HP’s JetSend technology.
Pricing:
Did not disclose MSRP.
How best to buy:
Through authorized resellers and distributors.
Fax service bureau relationships:
None.
Tobit (Montréal, QU, Canada — 514-392-9220) is a leading
Novell partner, so if you’re using NetWare and need a fax
server, begin here. The software can fax-enable any DOS or Windows-based
application and has dual-NOS applications: Netware 3.x-5 and NT4.0.
It can be upgraded to a full unified messaging server. Tobit also
provides open APIs. *
FENESTRAE UMR ROUTES FAXES VERY INTELLIGENTLY
Fenestrae’s Faxination software considers not just the type of message,
the time of day and destination, but the content of the fax in
determining the most efficient and least costly method for sending.
Consider a user in the Japanese office of a multinational corporation.
He sends a fax that is composed as a Word file attachment to the
branch office in Atlanta. The sending fax server knows that the
company’s WAN goes to Atlanta, and it ships it using IP over
the Exchange backbone via Exchange’s Message Transfer Agent.
And because it knows that it is a Kanji document, it performs
the document conversion on the sending side, using a Kanji-enabled
version of Word. Had the document not been converted from Word
until the receiving end, an English-version Word application would
have choked on the Kanji font.
Also: If Faxination sees that a ten-page document is going to
fifty people, it also knows that the job can be accomplished more
cheaply by being sent through the NetMoves service bureau, and
ships it there.
UMR can also be used for backbone hop-off, allowing the long-haul
portion of the transmission to go via Exchange Backbone, then
manipulating the destination phone number to be automatically
dialed as a local call for delivery.
The end result is an Enterprise aware routing mechanism that
first solved the potential document conversion problem, then sent
a significantly smaller document across the backbone for transmission.
Once the fax has been sent, Faxination logs all the data to a
Public Folder in Exchange, and returns the notification with routing
information back to the sender.
Other “triggers” than can spawn logic processes are
message type (fax, Telex, pager/SMS, etc.), size, attachment types,
destination, and number of recipients.
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