FaxPress 5000
FaxPress 5000 offers a complete and affordable turnkey solution with no compromise in the standard features you expect in an enterprise fax server. The FaxPress hardware unit is about the size of a small VCR, weighs 12 pounds, and consumes 1 square foot of counter space. The unit consists of little more than a box with a network connection port, a parallel port for optional printer connection, and phone-line ports for connecting to your outbound lines. My test unit had eight telephone ports.
The FaxPress server requires a network file server, however, to centralize its database and coordinate operation. The product supports both NT and Novell NetWare file servers; I installed the test unit on one of my NT Server 4.0 testbeds. Installation proceeded without a problem. The only requirement I had to fulfill was to provide the unique static IP address that the FaxPress server requires. The product is ready to use after you configure it.
As Screen 14 shows, the FaxPress client lets you perform standard fax functions such as composing a fax, selecting recipients from a variety of phone books, selecting a cover page, and attaching files to the fax. The software also includes several powerful features that help reduce the amount of time needed to send a fax. These features include letting you maintain a favorite-document list (e.g., price list, catalog) that you can quickly fax from a directory listing. You can even convert the document to fax format and save the binary image, which saves time when you next need to fax that document.
FaxPress lets you route inbound faxes to Exchange through Castelle's bundled Exchange Direct software. The product includes a full range of administrative utilities for creating phone books and cover pages and managing the outbound-fax queues.
For LCR, FaxPress includes the Castelle Internet Faxing (CIF) and Third-Party Internet Faxing (TIF) features. When you enable these features, the product automatically routes faxes based on rules you define (e.g., to a specific area code) to another FaxPress server across the Internet.
The way FaxPress lets you configure load balancing is interesting. The product operates on the principle of master and slave fax servers. A master fax server communicates with the user and hands off traffic as necessary to slave fax servers. A slave fax server can either rasterize the fax image (i.e., convert the image to a binary image) or place the fax call. You can configure several slave fax servers to one master if you want. Depending on your environment's size, you can even define a master fax server as a slave to other masters. Traffic routing is transparent to end users.
One area in which the product at first appeared to fall short is its support for interfacing with heterogeneous systems. I was unable to find a documented way to feed outbound faxes from my UNIX host to the FaxPress system. I later learned that you have two ways to send a fax in a heterogeneous environment.
One method you can employ is to use SMTP to email the fax to the fax server. The fax server then processes the fax and sends it to the recipients.
Alternatively, you can use the optional Advanced Embedded Codes Gateway (AECG). The AECG lets you send batch files from mainframes, minicomputers, and UNIX workstations.
The AECG also lets you integrate SAP R/3 into your fax environment. According to Castelle, support for PeopleSoft will also be in place by press time. Castelle makes available a software development kit (SDK) that lets developers use FaxPress to fax-enable their applications.
The eight-port product costs only a bit more than the four-port product, and both versions include an unlimited-user license. Compared with the high cost of other turnkey solutions, these prices make FaxPress an attractive solution.
TOPCALL
TOPCALL's fax server is a completely custom-built and configured enterprise fax server. My 19" * 19" * 7" Pentium II processor-based test unit arrived with a TOPCALL systems engineer in attendance. This level of service is standard for a TOPCALL installation. Before delivery, TOPCALL's sales and engineering staff schedules conference calls with you to determine your installation-specific requirements. TOPCALL then builds your custom system and performs software installation, setup, and in-house testing before delivering the unit. This service ensures a high level of quality and minimizes problems. My test unit had 256MB of RAM and 9GB of disk storage.
Installing and configuring the product takes only a few minutes. Because TOPCALL does much of the setup offsite before delivery, onsite setup time is minimal. For my unit, TOPCALL installed NT, the TOPCALL server software components, and the File Interface software. Because the Exchange component needs to communicate with Exchange Server during installation, you must connect the product to your network before installing the Exchange component. The onsite installation process took about 30 minutes from start to finish.
The TOPCALL for Windows management window, which Screen 15 shows, provides an overview of system activity on the server. In addition to providing a detailed log of the activity the server software performed (in the upper pane), the software also provides a utilization monitor (in the lower pane) that shows how much line resources inbound faxes, outbound faxes, and idle time used.
The TOPCALL system is first and foremost a message switch. The system routes messages it receives to other systems that the TOPCALL system knows about. For example, if you have a Novell Groupwise system in your configuration, TOPCALL can route one message to both a fax recipient and a Groupwise recipient. The software's capabilities exceed PC-based solutions to let you route to Telex, X.400, SAP R/3, and several mainframe and midrange email systems. The switch can also route fax requests from heterogeneous systems, such as an AS/400. In addition, the product can archive and accept faxes through a Web interface.
TOPCALL's level of integration for legacy systems is exceptional. By default, my system has the TOPCALL File Interface, which monitors a directory on my NT server for files containing keywords that instruct TOPCALL to send a fax. I easily accessed this directory from my UNIX server by mounting the NT share. You can send attachments with the file interface because the TOPCALL server converts attachments to a rendered image.
Because the TOPCALL server has rendering capability, the software can offer a powerful file-reporting capability. When the software encounters an attachment type it doesn't know how to handle, you can supply a series of keystrokes for the software to use to handle attachments of that type. For example, if the software alerts you that it can't handle a .gif file, you can teach the software to open an application and print the graphic image to the TOPCALL-installed printer driver.
All this power and hand-holding doesn't come at a low price. Prices increase from the base price depending on options and the extent of the customization and integration services you need.
Corrections to this Article:
- The FaxFacts contact box states that the price of the Fax Mail component is $185 per line. The $550-per-line price for FaxFacts includes Fax Mail.