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Traditional Faxing — Promise and Problems

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Traditional Faxing - Promise and Problems

Contact j2 GlobalTM about meeting any of the requirements outlined in this paper. Visit us at www.j2global.com, or contact our enterprise sales team at 866-761-81111

Traditional Faxing — Promise and Problems

Nearly fifty years after the first commercial fax machine was introduced in 1964, faxing is at an important crossroads. It continues to play an important role in the business world, most notably in the legal profession, where it enjoys a high standard of acceptability as an admissible writing valid in a court of law (California Court of Appeals, Hofer v. Young, 38 Cal. App. 4th 52. 1995). At the same time, businesses that depend on faxing face immense challenges. Hardware-based faxing is increasingly expensive, is a significant drain on IT resources, and is a serious security risk where issues of client privacy are concerned. Traditional faxing impacts the bottom line of every firm, driving up costs and posing infrastructure concerns that undermine its utility.

Keeping a technology that works, yet improving the way it is used, is a challenge many law firms have readily embraced. What these firms have found is that the drawbacks of traditional faxing are eliminated when their fax service is moved to third-party hosted services (“the cloud”). Outsourced digital faxing is inexpensive, minimizes impact on in-house IT resources, and is just as secure as email — more so when configured for secure storage or secure transit.

The Cost and Complexity of Hardware-Based Faxing

Common problems associated with hardware-based faxing readily demonstrate the unique challenges faced by legal IT managers and staff managing in-house fax systems. Even in the best situations, serious questions persist over cost, security, and support and functional service issues.

1. High capital investment costs Building, equipping, and maintaining in-house

fax servers is an expensive proposition. Consider that the cost of one fax card in a server costs approximately $15,000 and you can see how provisioning only one or two such servers get very expensive very quickly. To increase traffic volume means building additional servers with component cards. Add to this the necessary application servers, software licenses, utility and energy costs, dedicated fax (TELCO) lines, data storage, service/maintenance agreements, and IT resources to care for all this equipment, and the necessity of overseeing an in-house fax system becomes a burden that does not make sense for

firms struggling to limit operational expenditures.

Fax Trends: A recent survey of U.S. law firms by j2 Global, Inc. found that the use of fax machines and servers is declining faster than the overall use of fax. This trend is fueled, in part, by high capital investment costs needed to keep aging fax systems operational.

2. Equipment obsolesce Fax machines and servers are like any

technological device — from PCs to laptops, cell phones to smartphones — they quickly become obsolete as the next generation of devices becomes available. But simply replacing equipment every year or so is not a cost-conscious option. For firms that let their fax devices become too antiquated, replacing them en-mass is a daunting task that may be more than their budget allows.

Fax Trends: A recent survey of U.S. law firms by j2 Global, Inc. found that most law firms use aging fax servers nearing end of life. When problems with this equipment arise, these firms will be forced to refurbish this equipment quickly or risk losing their fax service altogether.

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3. Security concerns For fax machines, security is all about physical

location and access. Locked fax rooms, limited user pools, access codes to retrieve faxes, and similar precautions limit the possibility of faxes being left on the machine for anyone to read. Still, even with such precautions, limiting access to sensitive data and client information is not one-hundred percent certain. Even under the best of circumstances, fax machines are a security risk.

For fax servers, security issues center on the connection between the server and the application receiving or sending transmissions (this can be an email server for example). Assigning appropriate access credentials to users and making sure that the application is not improperly used is one key to keeping the system safe. Another is adding secure transit or storage protocols, but this means investing in expensive and time-consuming development.

Fax Trends: Our survey found that employees expect to receive faxes anywhere, anytime via mobile devices, adding another security burden to in-house fax systems.

4. Scalability Making your fax system useful to your entire

firm is a daunting task. Scaling it so that every employee who needs an individual fax line has one, integrating Multi-Function Devices (MFDs) into the system, and determining service levels for multiple offices are only a few of the deployment and management challenges of in-house faxing.

Fax Trends: Our survey found that firm acquisitions force IT to unify disparate fax solutions, driving up costs and complexity. In addition, external industry drives demand for new fax functionalities, such as digital signatures, thumbnail previews, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Developing these features in-house means expensive development time and additional service support.

5. Inconsistent performance Even the best hardware-based fax system can

produce unsatisfactory results. Missed pages, dropped faxes, deterioration in print quality, and send issues are common delivery problems. For firms with limited delivery capacity, queuing faxes to off-hours keeps faxes from clogging the system at the expense of delaying time-sensitive material. At the other end of the spectrum, equipment that sits idle during off peak-hours wastes money, making it difficult to recoup the cost of building the system.

Fax Trends: Our survey found that firms are looking for affordable ways to issue personal fax numbers to all employees. Adding users to a system with spotty performance will potentially degrade service even further, and risks user dissatisfaction and a diminished ROI.

6. IT strain Keeping the system running is the main priority,

but what about expansion? Disaster recovery? Security? Licensing and service agreements? New feature sets? The time-consuming care and maintenance of in-house fax systems often prevents IT resources from being assigned to more important investment projects.

Fax Trends: Our survey found that IT departments view fax as a low priority nuisance that prevents them from maintaining mission-critical systems for the firm. Outsourcing removes this burden from your IT staff, freeing up resources and capital that can be used to make your firm more competitive and lean.

Solving these myriad challenges has fueled the growing and steady migration of fax services to the cloud. The emergence of proven, stable, and affordable hosted fax providers now enables legal IT managers to eliminate their costly license and maintenance investments and leverage existing IP connectivity to support digital fax transmissions.

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Reaping the Benefits of Hosted Faxing with eFax® Corporate

The term “hosted applications” refers to any software-based business tool provided and maintained by a third-party vendor and accessed remotely by the customer via an Internet connection. These applications have gained trust and credibility within the legal industry due to their economies of scale, rewarding budget-conscious adopters with a “pay only for what you use” pricing structure that complements today’s leaner business models.

eFax Corporate® is the leading hosted Fax Messaging solution for global enterprises. It is a flexible, digital solution that allows sending and receiving faxes by email using your PC, laptop, or smartphone. eFax Corporate® eliminates many of the costs associated with running local fax servers and machines — equipment, supplies, licenses, etc. — while replacing them with a predictable cost model that includes nearly unlimited scalability.

Select IT benefits of eFax Corporate® include:

• Bettercostsavings—eliminate capital investment costs, including reductions in monthly recurring costs for T1 and TELCO lines, data storage, energy consumption, license renewal, and human resources. For firms that still rely on fax machines, digital faxing eliminates soft costs such as paper, toner, and dedicated analog telecom lines.

• Improvedresourceallocation—outsourcing to eFax Corporate® means we take care of the technology upgrades, network monitoring, and security administration, while your IT resources focus on core competencies.

• Simplifiedintegration—eFax Corporate® easily ports into your document management system, back-end systems, and MFDs without downtime or loss of productivity.

• Scalability—transfer your existing fax numbers over to the eFax® platform; as your firm grows, add local, toll-free, or international eFax® numbers whenever you need them.

• RobustNetworkArchitecture—eFax Corporate® is supported by a globally distributed network of datacenters and hosted colocations across North America, Europe, and Asia. Business continuity for back-end systems (Core Database, Billing, Account Provisioning) is provided via a geographically redundant Disaster Recovery datacenter facility. The core front-end services (Inbound and Send) utilize distinct architectural approaches designed to maximize service availability.

• OptionalencryptedstorageusingeFaxSecure™—With eFax Secure™, faxes are not delivered directly to your email. Instead, a notification email for each new fax is sent to the recipient’s email inbox. Included in this notification is a URL; when the user clicks this link, a Secure Socket connection (SSL) is opened and the recipient enters their eFax Corporate® credentials to view the fax. No sensitive information is directly transmitted. The fax remains encrypted and securely stored as long as you need it, reducing strain on your local email servers and storage devices.

• Optionalencryptionin-transit—eFax Corporate® can be configured to use Transport Layer Security (TLS) for all in-transit faxes. TLS is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard for data confidentiality that secures transparent, end-to-end 256-bit encryption between your mail server/gateway and eFax® servers. It offers solid data security — messages are not sent if a secure connection cannot be established. From an adoption viewpoint, TLS poses no additional development time, as this protocol is already supported on most Exchange servers and gateway appliances.

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Contact j2 GlobalTM about meeting any of the requirements outlined in this paper. Visit us at www.j2global.com, or contact our enterprise sales team at 866-761-81111 4

Select user benefits of eFax Corporate include:

• Improvedperformance—enjoy near-real-time processing with extensive scalability, security measures, and one of the highest SLAs in the industry for uptime, throughput, delivery, and customer service response periods. Eliminate the need for queuing faxes until off-hours.

• Improvedproductivity—fax delivery to e-mail saves time handling paper or searching for lost faxes, and enables instantaneous fax sharing among employees and clients. Thumbnail previews and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for inbound faxes make indexing, filing, and searching for your faxes hassle free. Accelerate revenue collection and improve cash flow through client-matter IDs and fax page logs.

• Convenience—dedicated fax numbers can be allocated to every attorney, administrator, and staff member. Create custom cover pages for individuals, practice groups, or offices, once or as many times as you need.

• Mobility—faxes can be accessed anywhere there is an Internet connection using a PC, laptop, smartphone, or other mobile device.

• Achievecorporateobjectives—our environmentally friendly, 100% paperless solution helps comply with Federal privacy regulations, including Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB).

Since eFax Corporate® requires no capital expenditures or maintenance costs, it delivers a strong, immediate return on investment while making your company systems more efficient and reliable.

Ease into the Cloud with eFax Corporate

eFax Corporate® facilitates better client counsel by ensuring that the client can reach their attorney at any time, and that the attorney can respond quickly and easily. This leads to better client service and increase billings. Consider these other advantages eFax Corporate® brings to your organization:

• Easeofdeploymentandscalability eFax Corporate® deploys in minutes, not days

or weeks. Manage all user accounts through a central Administrative portal. Provide each employee a unique local or toll-free fax number for a truly scalable solution. You can also port your existing fax numbers over to the eFax® platform, then add local or toll-free eFax® numbers as needed. eFax Corporate® integrates easily with Outlook and other email accounts, as well as with most MFDs..

• Easeofuse eFax Corporate® brings reliable, easy to use fax

services to your desktop, laptop, or smartphone immediately, without disrupting your current faxing capacity or requiring employee downtime for training. Account access, built-in help files, and customer support 24/7/365 ensures that every user can send a fax whenever and wherever they need to.

• Integrationintofirmworkflow eFax Corporate® allows you to automatically

associate the cost of a fax to a specific client-matter ID, helping you eliminate missed bill backs and efficiently recover costs. Audit trails and fax page logs help track incoming and outgoing faxes for precise usage reporting. In addition, you can streamline workflow by providing fax numbers only to those employees who actually need the service.

• Qualityofservice eFax Corporate® ensures its superior level of

service by maintaining a global network of TELCO-grade call-locations equipped with environmental controls, business continuity support, power management and protective equipment designed to keep servers running at the highest service level. Together, this infrastructure ensures a 99.5% uptime, delivery times of 2-5 minutes, and unparalleled transmission security for over 12,000,000 clients in 49 countries.




The redundancy of critical elements in the eFax Corporate® network —servers, connections, storage points, and PSTN carrier partners — provides a true enterprise solution that will not fail with the loss of a single colocation or hub. In addition, the eFax Corporate® network is monitored 24/7/365 by dedicated Information Security professionals responsible for preserving the integrity of all systems and protecting confidential customer information. Access logs and authentication requirements are reviewed regularly. All systems are hardened by disabling and removing any unnecessary users, protocols and processes.

Summary

Hosted faxing offers compelling advantages over traditional server-based solutions, particularly for companies looking to build a strong framework to conduct, manage, and control document delivery.

eFax Corporate® is the leading hosted Fax Messaging solution for companies looking to streamline the exchange of business critical information and eliminate the costly infrastructure of in-house fax machines and servers. From single user implementations, to multiple users deployed across organizations and regions, to customized application faxing, eFax Corporate® helps automate client business processes and workflow, delivering a strong return on investment.

Company Overview

eFax Corporate® is part of publicly-traded j2 Global™ Inc. (NASDAQ: JCOM). Founded in 1995, j2 Global provides outsourced, value-added messaging and communications services to individuals and businesses around the world. The Company offers fax, voicemail and document management solutions, Web-initiated conference calling and unified-messaging and communications services.

To learn more about eFax Corporate®, please visit us at http://efaxcorporate.com. You may contact our U.S. Enterprise Sales team at 888-532-9265 (toll free) or 323-817-1155 (direct). In the U.K. contact us at +44 (0) 8707 113311.

To learn more about j2 Global™, please visit http://www.j2global.com.

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