Zen and the Art of Fax Servers

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 better productivity for your staff (no more standing around waiting for the fax machine), better control over your fax costs (no more sending low-priority faxes at high-cost daytime business telephone rates), and better responsiveness to your customers (customers get their faxes more rapidly because your staff can produce them more easily). However, with numerous fax packages on the market today, determining which fax server software is right for your business is difficult.

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

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

The market identifies a single user with a direct connection to a telephone line as a standalone user. The standalone market is the level most users are familiar with. This level is common for most Windows users because Microsoft includes Microsoft Fax with Windows 95 machines (and now provides Microsoft Personal Fax for Windows NT machines) and most new computers sold today include a fax-modem for personal communication.

In the business world, standalone faxing was common for a long time (and still is in many small businesses), primarily because device-sharing software did 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 because each machine must have a fax-modem and a telephone line.

The next market segment is the workgroup fax segment. This segment is the logical outgrowth from standalone faxing in the business community, as more employees realize they need to fax from their desktop. Businesses have consolidated their faxing activities onto one server because maintaining multiple phone lines is expensive and software is available to let several users have a fax modem. This market segment consists of a single nondedicated fax server with a single outbound fax-modem and telephone line such as a Win95 machine running Microsoft Fax and a shared network fax device for others to access. (Microsoft's Personal Fax for NT does not allow device sharing at this time. It supposedly will under NT 5.0.) This situation is common for small businesses and large companies that have not consolidated their faxing activities at a higher level.

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

The department market segment is the next level up from the workgroup fax market. Department fax servers differ from their workgroup counterparts by moving the fax server to a dedicated machine hosting the fax server. You can configure this dedicated machine to automatically log on in network environments with a secure ID and password, and you can physically secure it in areas with other network equipment. Department fax servers today represent the largest market segment. They offer a good compromise to handle inherent problems with solutions in lower-level market segments and offer expandability and growth potential as businesses increasingly use faxing resources in day-to-day operations. For example, department-level fax servers can start out with one telephone line for faxing, and you can add more lines as demand for fax resources increase.

In large companies with several functional areas (such as a marketing group, engineering group, and accounting group) or business locations, each group or location can implement a group-level fax solution. This configuration is the company-level fax server market segment, where you have multiple dedicated servers with one or more lines per server, each servicing a specific group within the company. In this segment, the servers operate independently of one another.

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

Another market segment not typically part of the business fax lifecycle is the specialized market. Specialized fax markets address fax solutions the average business does not need. Examples of specialized fax server solutions include those that provide fax broadcasts (where a sales company faxes a flyer to hundreds of customers overnight) and fax-on-demand server (where your customers call in to retrieve fax documents--a popular solution with many computer technical support departments). Special servers and software designed to address a company's specific needs fall within this fax server market segment.

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