Technologies: Fax and Figures
Does the internet and email spell the end for the humble old fax machine? No, cries Guy Clapperton, inter-breeding is the way forward
Hello children. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I?ll begin. Once upon a time, Freddie the Fax machine was the cleverest boy in his class. Everybody had to have a Freddie in their office. They?d clamour around him every day, watching for missives from around the world that he might be kind enough to deliver. And then after he?d regurgitated some words for them they?d say ?thank you, Freddie Fax, that?s great?.
But then a bad thing happened. Do you know what it was? That?s right, people started sending all manner of rubbish ? sorry, children, I mean they started sending junk mail as well as the important stuff. And Freddie the Fax?s paper started fading as it and he got older. Then that nasty Pamela PC in the corner started thinking: ?Nyah hah hah, I could replace him if Monty the Modem and I got together? ? so they did, and poor old Freddie the Fax died horribly in a pool of molten plastic and metal screaming for his mother.
What? Oh, sorry, got a bit carried away. No, you?re right, the fax software service market hasn?t actually demolished the standalone fax market in the way that a number of people believed it would, and it isn?t likely to either.
A lot of customers are only too happy to have that refreshing beep followed by a freshly minted fax in their hands, to say nothing of those people who?d rather not have the fax left hanging every time the PC goes down, and indeed would rather not have their entire office installation dependent on the one machine. Say what you want, you?ll never persuade some people that a fully functioned PC with voicemail, answering phone and fax is anything but a huge risk that involves losing everything when one bit goes wrong.
Nevertheless there is a market for fax systems and a healthy one at that. Evidence from the US suggests the market is taking off over there and the demand will probably filter through here soon. Uunet has claimed only recently that sending faxes over the Net will cut the cost of faxing in half, and accordingly it launched its global internet fax service in July. A Gallup/Pitney Bowes report this year, also from the US, said that 40 per cent of corporate telecoms bills are fax related, and this is expected to increase by 12 per cent. Worse still, 28 per cent of international faxes fail on the first attempt, so costs are boosted again ? helpful if you?re a telecoms provider.
Technically, sending a fax over the Net is less complex than it sounds. It?s a matter of adhering to the TCP/IP protocol and making a local telephone call for an international transmission, then allowing your fax provider or ISP to worry about the rest of it. If you are a regular international fax sender this is likely to cut out 30 to 40 per cent of your call charges, and there are service providers that will allow you to keep your existing fax machine but connect it to the data network rather than the voice version.
So, all this considered, why is fax software not huge business in the UK just yet? Chris Oswald, managing director of Equisys, which sells the Zetafax server product, denies that the market is all that far behind America. ?We?re only just behind them and we?re ahead of most of the countries in Europe,? he says. ?A lot of technology takes its time to come over from the US, but fax capability is definitely on the shopping list for a lot of network managers in the UK.?
The difficulty with selling a computer fax system to the business market is that you?re trying to sell customers something they?ve already got and is probably working. That?s the likely response anyway. When faced with this, the cost model is the most persuasive way of selling the stuff, but even then the waters can be muddied.
Unfortunately, purportedly independent pieces of data often turn out to be written by people with vested interests. Hewlett Packard, for example, has worked out an intricate cost model that you can find at www.hp.com/info/cof that illustrates admirably that it is cheaper to scan first, then fax the thing from a networked computer. It is arguably not terribly reassuring in terms of the information?s objectivity that this is being touted as a reason to invest in HP?s own Scan To Share solution, based on the Scanjet 5. It?s also written in conjunction with PA Consulting, which, as those of us in the know are aware, has a PR division responsible for (wait for it) HP. None of which means the information on offer isn?t totally kosher, but you can?t help wonder about the motives.
None of this will help people decide whether to go for standalone fax or a PC-based system, whether networked or otherwise. Something that might do in the interim is to implement some sort of IT system like Nicefax from Nice Systems, which manages and archives faxes whether they come in through a PC, a phone line or onto a dedicated fax machine.
Stephen Thurston, sales director of the recently appointed UK distributor for Nice, Business Systems, denies that this is just a stepping stone between standalone fax and PC systems though. ?This product offers security to an extent,? he comments. But above all it is an archiving medium. ?Nice?s past is very much in voice recording for archives to resolve potential future disputes,? Thurston adds.
Nicefax will follow essentially the same pattern ? holding documents electronically and accurately with a database search for verification later.
A useful extra wrinkle to be aware of is the internet fax model advocated by Jfax, among others. Worldwide sales vice president Richard Bennett explains that as far as the sender is concerned faxes are sent to a fax number. However, this fax number is actually held independently by Jfax. The fax data is then sent to the email address of the customer?s choosing, where the fax software interfaces with the comms software, and displays the message on screen.
It?s important to keep an element of fax in the equation, believes Bennett. ?There are a lot of installed fax machines out there and they?re not going to go away,? he says. ?But there are a lot of people connecting to the internet and they don?t want to have to connect to the fax for one thing and the PC for something else.?
The success or failure of the computer and internet fax market stands on two points. First, whether people will accept a bit of software as a substitute for a fax. And let?s be honest, the mechanics of sending fax by PC are far from ideal as yet. Unless you have everything you want on your system already, including logos, signatures and all relevant graphics (including a signature for every new employee likely to send a fax), you will need a scanner. It takes time and fiddling to scan a document in, check it and then send the fax out via the comms software and hence it remains easier to send it out ?by hand?, if that?s an appropriate way to describe what actually happens. This is a matter of user preference, and not much else.
Second, and more important, there?s the little matter of whether email is going to demolish the fax market totally or not. There is little enough reason to send a text-only fax message to someone when an email is almost certain to be faster, will register on their system and can be cut and pasted into whatever document format the recipient wants. This makes the continuing growth of the fax market in the US, with the UK almost certain to follow suit, a little baffling. A cynic might almost think that people weren?t automatically latching on to email because they?d read about it in the IT press, that they were thinking their purchases through before making them ? then sticking with something they know works rather than something they have yet to test (this is it, guys, we?re doomed).
Equisys? Oswald disputes the fax v email argument pretty vehemently, though denying that it?s a discussion that comes up in the company at all. ?The fact is that everyone is on fax and they?re used to doing business on it, and you can?t say the same about email,? he says. While he acknowledges that the position will change over a period of time, he still claims that ?the number of people who will accept business by email, even if they?re on it, is smaller than the number of people who will do it by fax?.
Bennett agrees. ?If anything, the standalone fax market is growing in spite of the people who said email would kill it.? He admits, though, that there are areas in which the internet defeats the fax hands-down ? for example, the internet is location-independent. Mind you, with a product like Jfax, he can say that and not damage his business.
There are also important issues of who owns a document as it leaves a desk. If it?s sent by fax then it?s a point to point connection with only a set of cables between you and the recipient, whereas if a fax goes via the internet it needs to pass through the grubby mitts of an internet service provider.
In spite of the publicity that urges us to think of the internet as some sort of indestructible behemoth manoeuvring itself under its own energy, it has some way to go before it?s as invulnerable as its advocates would have us believe. In fact a system such as the Nicefax set-up, which identifies faxes as having been delivered, would be worse than useless if users assumed delivered meant received, and a fax went missing. As long as this remains the case, it?ll be safer to have a separate fax system.
Anyone still not convinced should consider whether they?ve ever lost an email, or if one has ever vanished into the ether only to reappear at its destination hours or days later for a reason no one seems able to explain.
The chances are very good that the future of fax will be a hybrid between the two. The Jfax model, for example, interfaces with your PC and sends the fax to your email address, so you have to ask whether this is really fax or some sort of email refinement ? and whether anyone other than an anally retentive Niles Crane soundalike really cares about the difference.
In the meantime you can expect more functionality within standalone fax systems ? Oswald wouldn?t be in the least bit surprised if word files could soon attached with fax documents, and believes the two technologies will eventually dovetail and become interchangeable. ?It?ll be like the difference between the post office and a courier, just a different level,? he says, although he doesn?t care to extend the metaphor far enough to say which will be which, or indeed which will get to wear the leathers and drive the cool bikes.
As long as it?s transparent to the user, and people can send faxes to it without feeling any undue pain, the chances are the hybrid is a model that will stick ? although the inevitable delay between the fax being sent and received, due to users being off-line, will take some getting used to.
And so, children, Freddie the Fax picked himself up, dusted himself down and made best friends with Pamela PC and Monty Modem. They started swapping spare parts, becoming interchangeable and working together until eventually nobody could remember why they had bothered using them alone in the first place. And all the dealers started making a load of dosh out of selling kit to hook them together, and consultancy services, and implementation across larger networks.
It?s no use, I?ve got to stop writing this stuff while I?m watching Teletubbies.