Fax Server

For the most part of 20 years, companies worldwide have relied on the fax for simple and discreet delivery of information and important documents. These days, entire industries would appear to a halt without the ability to send and receive faxes.
Although e-mail has put a dent in the fax number distributed today, nearly all businesses - large and small - still relies on traditional fax machines dedicated to the conduct of daily affairs.

Many companies, however, have become terribly inefficient in how they approach and manage the field of facsimile communication in their strategy to reduce costs of telecommunications in general. Too many telephone lines and services too many little used fax machines is a recipe for unnecessary telecom expenses.

Fax Servers to the Rescue

The convenience of traditional fax technology has its price. For large organizations, this means tens or hundreds of machines, each requiring dedicated phone lines to send and receive faxes.

Most of the faxes out of business during daylight hours, when the toll rates are higher, which adds to the cost of each transmission. In addition, traditional faxing requires an individual to copy a document, walk to the fax machine, dial the number, then wait for confirmation from the other end.

A fax server can solve all these problems by integrating hardware, software and LANs in a cost effective, transparent faxing for all organizations - large or small. Fax servers allow programs to be consolidated at the server itself, eliminating the need for multiple machines and lines dedicated to each machine.

What is a fax server?

Fax servers essentially have three distinct elements: a PC connected to a LAN and a telephone line, application software fax server, and an intelligent fax board.

A fax server is a system installed in a local area network (LAN) server that allows users to send and receive faxes directly from their desktop. These messages can be stored in word processing files, database files, or graphics and spreadsheet files. Scanned documents can be sent as fax messages directly from the desktop actually emulate a dedicated fax.

The advantages of using a fax server

Fax servers can be very profitable over traditional dedicated fax machine. Numerous studies have documented and compared the costs associated with manual fax transmission from a fax server solution. The time saved by employees themselves pay for itself in a short period of time. Add to that the savings made by removing machinery, paper, toner and maintenance costs and the fax server becomes even more compelling.

The most obvious advantage is that a fax server can emulate multiple fax machines - one for each network user. For example, an office that may have already used 25 dedicated fax machines (and 25 phone lines) for its 150 employees, can work very well with a fax server only, and perhaps only 60 to 10 phone lines connected to server, depending on the volume inbound and outbound fax activity.

Fax servers also make it easy to send faxes to groups of people and can be configured to send faxes automatically at specific times of day or night. As the e-mail servers, fax servers can route incoming faxes to the user's desktop keeping prying eyes of correspondence by fax confidential and private. The fax server will also automatically retry fax numbers if and when they are occupied.

How many phone lines do you need a fax server?

Some guidelines industry suggest a telephone line network users 7-25 although this estimate must be considered only a ballpark "figure. The number of telephone lines needed for each fax server ultimately depends on the specificity of e.