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Advantages Of Faxing In The Cloud

By: Alex De Mostafa

You are going to be seeing a number of acronyms ending in "AAS" in the near future, to go along with the new "Technology As A Service" and "Software As A Service" buzzwords that are gaining such popularity. All the last three words mean is that if you need to store you files, you don't buy a new hard drive; or if you need to fax documents, you don't buy a fax machine. Instead you simply handle it online "as a service": renting off-site server storage for those digital documents and using an Internet-based fax service for your faxes.

Do not get confused about the "cloud" terminology. In essence, it means "virtual," "remote" or "offsite" and refers to all the other computing resources with which you are interconnected (Internet, get it?) that, in business parlance, can be leveraged to provide services you need. Among the chief benefits, of course, is that you pay for the specific work you need done or storage space you need to fill. You do not buy "hardware." You buy service.

Faxing without fax machines

Fax strategies went high-tech and computerized some years back, so there are companies that do operate their own in-house fax servers. On the whole, though, they are old and only meet your expectations in one or two areas, like convenience and savings on consumables. They fail on the others, such as hardware maintenance and overhead. In fact, managing a fax server and its various complexities siphons off important IT resources from your organization's other important areas.

The move to email- or web-enabled faxing through servers did solve some of the issues with fax machines, as mentioned above. No more ink or toner, no more paper and no more paper jams, either. Obviously, a big part of the incentive for getting away from the standalone, phone-connected fax machine was to avoid the capital expense and maintenance costs. However, migrating fax services to another kind of hardware that you still have to buy or rent, and maintain and worry about, is far short of a real solution.

Hosted solutions, cloud-style

You may have gone halfway toward the cloud by investing in server products, but many IT departments who did the same are now ready to go all the way and outsource this common business function to "the cloud," thus meeting their fax needs with a hosted service. There are any number of options available for you if you've stalled somewhere along the road to total fax freedom, and there's plenty of help available for the migration from a fax server to a new, low-stress Internet fax solution.

Whether you are replacing your fax machine or your fax server, migrating to the cloud will relieve you of every concern with this core business function. The benefits are well-known and well documented, and the dependability and quality of faxing in the cloud get the highest possible marks and will get nothing but better as the process and procedures mature over time. This is just another natural progression of technology and business, moving together into a more cost-, time- and energy-efficient solution.

Final considerations

One day there may a single, integrated solution that handles e-mail, faxing of documents, sound and even video, all through one interface and a simple few clicks. That time is approaching, certainly, but right now there really are different needs to meet and processes to invoke to send text messages as opposed to the kind of documents that are now faxed. The route to the "integrated future" runs through the cloud, and the onramp is faxing.

The main thing you need to make the move to faxing in the cloud, of course, is good information. You need to get answers that are specific to your situation, so you can plot a route from "where you're at" to "where you want to be." The questions, then, need to be like these:

- How will a software-as-a-service fax solution reduce expenses, for the purchase of both hardware and consumables?

- What options are available to make use of any legacy systems, hardware or software?

- What kind of practical, step-by-step information will help make the switch a smooth one?

- What different framework or approach is there for migrating from a fax server to an Internet fax solution as opposed to from a fax machine?

- What is the best time, and what is the best way, to make the move?

If your business or operation is experiencing capacity problems or reliability issues, or you cannot easily scale up your faxing capabilities to handle increased demand, the time to make the move is probably past. It's time to start comparing the costs and benefits of the best cloud-based fax solutions, because it is never too early to start saving money or gaining efficiency.

Article Source: http://www.newarticledaily.com

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