Zen and the Art of Fax Servers

What are they, what do they offer, andhow can they save you money?

Fax servers are big business, and big in business today. Shipments of fax servers in 1996 totaled slightly more than $150 million and are projected to grow to more than $250 million by 1999, according to International Data, a computer industry marketing research firm in Massachusetts. If you don't already have a computer-based fax server at your business, you soon will.

A fax server solution for your business means many things: It means betterproductivity for your staff (no more standing around waiting for the faxmachine), better control over your fax costs (no more sending low-priority faxesat high-cost daytime business telephone rates), and better responsiveness toyour customers (customers get their faxes more rapidly because your staff canproduce them more easily). However, with numerous fax packages on the markettoday, determining which fax server software is right for your business isdifficult.

What are the market segments fax server software packages address? Whatfeatures do fax server packages offer, and how can you benefit from thesefeatures? Read on for Zen and the Art of Fax Servers.

Faxing Classifications
The fax market has five primary classifications (plus one specialized marketsegment): standalone, workgroup, department, company, and enterprise. Businessesoften begin their computerized faxing interaction with the standalone segmentand move up through the segments as the demand for fax resources increases. Thisevolution is the business fax server market lifecycle.

The market identifies a single user with a direct connection to a telephoneline as a standalone user. The standalone market is the level most users arefamiliar with. This level is common for most Windows users because Microsoftincludes Microsoft Fax with Windows 95 machines (and now provides MicrosoftPersonal Fax for Windows NT machines) and most new computers sold today includea fax-modem for personal communication.

In the business world, standalone faxing was common for a long time (andstill is in many small businesses), primarily because device-sharing softwaredid not exist to let a group of users share a single outbound fax device.However, this level of the fax market is the most expensive to maintain becauseeach machine must have a fax-modem and a telephone line.

The next market segment is the workgroup fax segment. This segment is thelogical outgrowth from standalone faxing in the business community, as moreemployees realize they need to fax from their desktop. Businesses haveconsolidated their faxing activities onto one server because maintainingmultiple phone lines is expensive and software is available to let several usershave a fax modem. This market segment consists of a single nondedicated faxserver with a single outbound fax-modem and telephone line such as a Win95machine running Microsoft Fax and a shared network fax device for others toaccess. (Microsoft's Personal Fax for NT does not allow device sharing at thistime. It supposedly will under NT 5.0.) This situation is common for smallbusinesses and large companies that have not consolidated their faxingactivities at a higher level.

Workgroup-level fax servers have some problems. Because they are usually onnondedicated machines, they use resources and affect one user's machine. Thatuser might experience a slowdown or accidentally shut the machine off, causingfax server sudden death. If the machine requires a logon or password forsecurity, the fax server becomes unavailable if the user logs off or if themachine reboots. And, because the user must be logged in at all times to makethe fax server available, this solution presents even more security problems inany kind of network environment.

The department market segment is the next level up from the workgroup faxmarket. Department fax servers differ from their workgroup counterparts bymoving the fax server to a dedicated machine hosting the fax server. You canconfigure this dedicated machine to automatically log on in network environmentswith a secure ID and password, and you can physically secure it in areas withother network equipment. Department fax servers today represent the largestmarket segment. They offer a good compromise to handle inherent problems withsolutions in lower-level market segments and offer expandability and growthpotential as businesses increasingly use faxing resources in day-to-dayoperations. For example, department-level fax servers can start out with onetelephone line for faxing, and you can add more lines as demand for faxresources increase.

In large companies with several functional areas (such as a marketinggroup, engineering group, and accounting group) or business locations, eachgroup or location can implement a group-level fax solution. This configurationis the company-level fax server market segment, where you have multiplededicated servers with one or more lines per server, each servicing a specificgroup within the company. In this segment, the servers operate independently ofone another.

The final market segment in the business fax lifecycle is theenterprise-level fax server. With enterprise-level fax server solutions, youhave multiple dedicated servers, each with multiple fax lines, at multiplebusiness locations working together through LAN or WAN links. These servers workcooperatively to share resources and workloads, providing a comprehensive, fluidfax solution.

Another market segment not typically part of the business fax lifecycle isthe specialized market. Specialized fax markets address fax solutions theaverage business does not need. Examples of specialized fax server solutionsinclude those that provide fax broadcasts (where a sales company faxes a flyerto hundreds of customers overnight) and fax-on-demand server (where yourcustomers call in to retrieve fax documents--a popular solution with manycomputer technical support departments). Special servers and software designedto address a company's specific needs fall within this fax server marketsegment.

Server Features
Now you're familiar with the different market segments providers of faxserver software packages address. Let's look at some features common to alllevels and some that are specific to certain levels.

At the workgroup and standalone fax server levels, users are looking forutilities to help them produce their faxes more easily and automate the faxtransmission process. Two popular features users like at these levels are havingthe fax server automatically maintain and generate a cover sheet for everyoutbound fax, and maintain a centralized address book of contact names and faxphone numbers. With these options, the user merely selects the destination froma list and presses a key to send the fax; the fax software automaticallygenerates a cover sheet, and the address book provides the dialing directions.

Once you move out of the standalone and workgroup-level fax servers,resource management becomes a concern. This concern includes contention for faxresources, integration with electronic mail packages, and automatic routing ofinbound faxes to user mailboxes.

Contention for fax resources is important, especially for single-serverdepartment-level environments. A server with many users sending outbound faxesmeans a long delay in the outbound queue. And long outbound queues meanreceiving faxes is next to impossible.

Forced-scheduling features help to reduce fax contention. With forcedscheduling, the server monitors itself. If it determines a user is monopolizingthe fax server, it will automatically defer the user's faxes until a later time.Furthermore, during periods of significant outbound traffic, you can configurethe server to pause to receive inbound faxes.

Contention is an issue easily addressed at the enterprise level. If youhave multiple fax servers, you can use the overflow routing features that somefax server packages offer. Overflow routing lets your fax servers work with oneanother to help distribute the workload of your outbound fax traffic. Forexample, if your sales department is working feverishly to put out a new pressrelease and its fax server is bogged down, the sales fax server will offloadsome of its traffic to other servers on your network.

Another popular trend with fax server products today is integration intothe Web environment with HTML clients. With these Web interfaces, a standard Webbrowser lets users send and receive faxes. For example, one popular fax serverproduct uses a combination of HTML (to collect control information such as 'To'and 'Fax #' information) and FTP (to retrieve the files you want to send) toprocess an outbound fax request. When you receive an inbound fax, the productdisplays it within your Web browser as a .gif image. Browser interfaces are abig plus in environments where you have people accessing your fax server fromremote locations. Plus, users have that familiar, easy-to-use Web interface.

For companies dealing with confidential data, such as marketing research,medical, and legal firms, many fax server packages offer a secure transmissionfeature. With secure transmissions, the sending fax server collects the remotefax machine's Customer Subscriber Identification (CSID) and compares it to astatic value on your server. If the ID doesn't match, the fax is aborted. Thisfeature keeps confidential records from ending up in the wrong hands.

Integration with email systems is a feature that companies in any marketsegment want because it offers several benefits. You can maintain a commonmailbox of fax destination names and addresses for all users. Users can sendfaxes directly from their email software, as if they were simply sending anemail message. The email server then identifies the recipient as a faxdestination and automatically routes the message to the fax server. Emailintegration also means you can automatically route any inbound faxes to users'mailboxes. Inbound routing can rapidly get complex and requires special faxhardware. I'll discuss email faxing in depth below.

Fax cost management is another feature important at almost every level.Most businesses pay per-minute telephone rates, so fax costs can growtremendously if unchecked.

Fax servers provide several utilities to help manage costs. One utility isa deferred scheduling feature, where faxes go out at a later time when telephonecharges are lower. Bundled transmission is a feature that lets the fax serversend several faxes destined to the same remote number as part of the sametransmission; this method prevents your system from repeatedly redialing andrenegotiating the call to the remote fax server. Another option, Least CostRouting (LCR), is particularly useful in large enterprise environments. LCRchooses the transmission path to minimize the cost of sending a fax. I'lldiscuss LCR more below and provide an example of how it can work in yourenvironment.

Automatic Fax Routing
With any fax server solution, one of the factors important to users is theserver's ability to route inbound faxes correctly. Routing generally implies theserver knows how to communicate with an email server (such as Exchange Server orMicrosoft Mail) to email the faxes as attachments to the destination user.

In the small standalone and workgroup-level fax server markets, automaticrouting is not as important because all fax resource users are typically in thesame physical business location. However, in the department and higher-level faxserver markets, proper fax routing becomes crucial. Fax servers with routingcapabilities use one of five different routing mechanisms: manual, CSID,dual-tone multifrequency (DTMF), ISDN/DDI addressing, or Direct Inward Dialing(DID).

Manual routing is the lowest level and highest maintenance of any routingsolution and is most common in the low-end fax server markets. With manualrouting, the software sends all inbound faxes to a common collection point,where a user (or fax administrator) manually inspects each fax to determine whomit belongs to. The fax administrator must then execute a command or function(depending on the software you're using) to send the fax to the appropriateuser. If the fax server software does not integrate with an email package, thefax administrator has to physically print the fax for delivery to the end user.Clearly this labor-intensive solution is undesirable.

CSID routing is easy to implement and useful in markets with small numbersof users who typically receive faxes from the same sources repeatedly. All faxmachines contain CSID information (when you receive a fax, this information isprinted along the top of each page), and some fax servers can intercept thisinformation. In a routing table, you can define a list of CSIDs and the userswho need to receive certain faxes. You can then have faxes from specific CSIDsautomatically appear in one or more mailboxes.

Unfortunately, even CSID routing has several problems. Suppose twoemployees, Jennifer (your payroll clerk) and James (your accounts receivableclerk), are set up in the routing table to receive faxes from a particular CSID.Both employees will receive all faxes from that CSID, even if a fax is intendedfor just one person. This situation can create a lot of work for each employee.They now have to sift through their inbox for specific faxes. This situationalso creates a security risk, because two employees might have to receive datafrom a common source. For example, James and Jennifer might typically receivefaxes from your bank. Do you really want your accounts receivable clerk to readthe fax from the bank that states your company doesn't have sufficient funds tocover the weekly payroll?

With CSID routing, you have a significant amount of setup work, because youhave to set up and maintain the routing table that matches CSIDs with users.CSID routing doesn't alleviate the need for manual routing. If the fax serverreceives a fax from a CSID that is not in your routing table, the fax will go toa default mailbox for manual processing.

DTMF routing offers an easy solution to manual and CSID routing problems.With DTMF routing, the remote fax machine or telephone system sends a DTMF codeto the fax server. The DTMF code identifies the destination for the fax. Eachuser, or a group of users, can have a mailbox, and the DTMF code automaticallyidentifies the mailbox to route the fax to. Thus, Jennifer can have all faxesidentified with a DTMF code 2100 sent to her, and James receives all faxes withDTMF code 2200. However, timing considerations (the inability of the sending faxsource to identify when to send the DTMF code) and incompatibility with otherfax machines (where a fax machine, once it is listening for your fax machine'sidentifying fax tones, cannot send a DTMF routing code) prevents DTMF routingfrom working in some instances.

If you work for a company large enough to justify having a PBX or Centrexsystem, you can take advantage of DID routing. With DID, specific fax extensionsring at one or more of your fax servers. The fax server picks up the DID code ofthe destination exchange and automatically routes the fax to the user who ismapped to that exchange. This method is similar to DTMF routing, except thatyour telephone system automatically identifies the destination to your faxserver. Because your local telephone company has to provide you with a logicaldial-in number, this solution can get expensive if you have many users and youwant to assign each user a personal inbound fax number for automatic routingpurposes.

Least Cost Routing
LCR is a fax server software mechanism that chooses the outbound fax'stransmission path. That is, the software analyzes the destination telephonenumber of the outbound fax and selects an appropriate transmission path designedto minimize transmission costs. Although primarily larger organizations withmultiple fax servers will take advantage of LCR, even a small, multisitebusiness can exercise this extremely useful option.

Let's look at a typical scenario: You are Director of InformationTechnology at a large high-tech products firm. Your sales and marketingdepartment is in New York (212 area code), but your engineering and technicalstaff is in Silicon Valley (415 area code). Both sites have an enterprise faxserver, and you maintain a dedicated high-speed internal network link betweenthe sites.

Because your products are high-tech and in demand, many California firmscall each day requesting that your sales department fax product information. Youcould use some of the cost-savings features of your fax software, such as thefax scheduling feature, to wait until after 7 pm Eastern time to send the fax(even with the three-hour time-zone delay your potential customer will get thefax the same business day). But your customers demand immediate access toinformation. So, you have to send your faxes from New York to California duringpeak business hours, and your fax telephone bill is thousands of dollars eachmonth.

LCR can help you significantly reduce the cost of faxing. You can configureyour fax software to automatically route any faxes bound to a fax number in the415 area code over your WAN link so that the fax server in your Californiaoffice can physically send the fax. This method saves the cost of along-distance call at peak business hour rates.

Naturally, this scenario is simplistic, and you have to do a full costanalysis to determine whether you would really save money. Real-life scenarioswill be more complex, with a myriad of factors contributing to the overall costof sending a fax. Does your national WAN carrier charge you for packets? If so,you need to factor these costs into the true cost of using LCR to send a fax.

Pay close attention when you use LCR. For example, within each area code,most Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs--such as Nynex, Bell Atlantic, orPacBell) have local calling areas, usually defined by the three-digit prefix ofeach seven-digit telephone number. Anything you send outside the local callingarea is an intrastate long distance telephone call. And RBOCs often have higherintrastate long-distance rates than the national long-distance carriers.Depending on the tariffs in the states where you have fax servers, you mightspend less money sending the fax through your usual long-distance carrier thansending a fax intrastate long distance.

Most LCR-enabled fax packages have several ways for you to define the pathan outbound fax will take. Most packages let you define a series of area codesand telephone prefixes and a routing path. When you combine this approach with afew high-quality multichannel fax boards and a network link, you can save asignificant sum each month.

Key to Success
The key to picking the proper fax package for your environment ispreparation and research. With an understanding of the different featuressoftware vendors build into fax server software, you are now better equipped todetermine the key features you need to include in your solution. Make a list ofthe features you need, rank them in order of importance, and compare them tofeature lists of different server packages to help you narrow down yourselection to a few packages. The buyer's guide on page 77 lists vendors forfax-server products to help get you started.

Unfortunately, when you're researching different network fax solutions,you'll find that many companies use different standards to determine the marketclassification they address. One company might define a department-level faxsolution as including both nondedicated and dedicated servers, and anothercompany might use only the dedicated server definition to address that marketsegment. Thus, a vendor targeting one particular market segment might havefeatures another vendor targeting a completely separate market segment has, andyou need to fully research the features each vendor offers. Software vendorsusually provide test drive versions of their software--something you definitelywant to take advantage of.

Now that you're familiar with the different markets fax servers attempt toaddress and some features you can expect in fax server products, which one isthe best for you? To help you answer that question, the next several issues ofWindows NT Magazine will present reviews of NT-based fax serverproducts. With these reviews, you can get a better understanding of the featureseach product offers and how easy they are to use.