SIP Trunking: Part 2

In my last blog entry we explored Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking and why it might be used in a Voice over IP (VoIP) environment. SIP Trunking has become a hot topic lately and is offered in many different varieties. It is important to know that different providers offer their services in many different ways and while at times connecting to the trunk may be as simple as providing an IP address, there may be additional work required to get any fax server to interoperate with the SIP Trunk. Let me describe how SIP Trunking is currently being used by Open Text Fax Server customers.

One of our customers brought in a SIP trunk from a provider that supported T.38 (T.38 is a Fax over IP standard created by the ITU and supported by Open Text Fax Server) and utilized a G.711 codec for call signaling. This configuration mirrors the requirements provided by the Open Text Fax Server to successfully transmit a fax via Fax over IP (FoIP). As a result the configuration was very straightforward. The service provider provided a demarc at the customers site and gave the customer an IP address to the session border element. All that was required for the customer to begin utilizing FoIP on the SIP Trunk was to configure the SR-140 card to point to the IP address of the session border element. An illustration of the implementation is below.

When the customer sent a fax from the Fax Server it would go to the IP address of the Session Border Element and into the cloud. While the diagram shows an IP PBX system on the customer’s premises the Fax Server is not required to use the IP PBX to communicate with the SIP Trunk. The SIP Trunk allowed the customer to implement a VoIP and FoIP system with minimal capital outlay and maintenance requirements. There was no requirement to install, configure, and maintain gateway equipment nor was there a need to create complex dialing plans to route calls to specific locations for toll bypass.

This is an example of a very simple SIP Trunk implementation. In my next blog entry we will look at a more complex scenario.

SIP Trunking: Part 1

By Adam Friedmann

You may have heard the term SIP Trunk being thrown around and wondered what all of the excitement is about. Well in order to understand what SIP Trunking is we should probably understand a little bit about how Voice over IP (VoIP) works. Session Initiation Protocol or SIP is a protocol which sets up and tears down a call that is carried over an IP network. Many organizations use SIP as a means to setup calls within their VoIP infrastructure. If I want to place a call to a colleague via our VoIP network, SIP will be used to setup the call and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) will be used to transmit my voice over our network.

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If I decide to place a call to my wife to let her know I will be late from work, SIP will still be used to setup the call but now we must have a way to interface with the telephone company to send the call to my home phone number. A gateway serves this purpose. The gateway will take the IP packets that my voice is translated into and convert it to analog information that can be sent over the PSTN. Likewise, my wife’s voice will be translated back into IP packets by the gateway so that they can be transmitted across the network.

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One of the reasons that an organization purchases a VoIP infrastructure is to save money on toll charges. Let’s use the example of making a call from my office in Tucson to a customer in Germany. If I have an office in Germany that is linked via a Wide Area Network (WAN) to my office in Tucson I can add a gateway in Germany and route my calls across my network to that gateway. The gateway would place the call on the local PSTN in Germany bypassing toll charges. If our organization had offices all over the world with WAN links I could place a gateway in each office and bypass toll charges when calling customers or colleagues local to those areas.

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Smaller companies might not have the staff to maintain this sort of infrastructure. This is where SIP Trunks enter our story. SIP Trunks are offered by Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSP) and allow an organization to see many of the benefits of a VoIP network without having to make a large capital outlay in the purchase of network infrastructure. The gateways that would be maintained in a standard VoIP implementation now move into the data cloud and are maintained by the ITSP. The organization purchases a SIP trunk from an ITSP and integrates it with an internal IP PBX. Connectivity is usually handled via a session border element that is maintained by the provider. Now when I make a call to my wife to let her know I am going to be late, the call is handed off from my IP PBX to the SIP trunk via the session border element and the provider routes the call to my home number via the PSTN. The organization only has to maintain the IP PBX.

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We’ll get an opportunity to learn more about SIP Trunking and how it relates to the OpenText Fax Server and OpenText Fax Gateways in a future blog. If you are interested in learning more about SIP trunks now you can visit these sites:

http://www.sipforum.org/sipconnect

http://www.bandwidth.com/wiki/article/SIP_Trunking

http://www.voip-news.com/feature/essential-guide-sip-trunking-040108/

The OpenText Fax Server works with Global Crossing and Broadvox sip trunks.

Open Text at Interop, Las Vegas 2010

The Open Text Fax and Document Distribution Group participated in the InterOp 2010 show held in Las Vegas during the last week in April. The event was IT focused with companies representing areas such as computer and network monitoring, VoIP, virtualization, cloud computing, hosting, and security. We had a steady stream of traffic and discussions centered around Fax over IP and the Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition Shared Services Model. As one customer remarked, “This was definitely worth the time and expense of coming here!”

Watch the Interop TMCnet Interview: Geoffrey Anderson, Sr. Product Manager of OpenText, speaks with Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC.

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Three Minutes to Install an Open Text Fax Gateway

By Matthew Williams

Whenever I take on a brand new project, I like to put it off as long as possible. This is great at first, but then usually backfires on me when I realize that the job was actually going to be more difficult than I expected. So when my manager asked me to put together a video on configuring the brand new Open Text Fax Gateway 308, I did the usual: put it on the backburner. The day before deadline, I started to panic because I thought it was going to be a little more difficult. I was shocked at what actually happened.
 
The Open Text Fax Gateway 308 is an 8-port FXO device designed to be as easy to use as possible, while allowing heaps of functionality from even the most demanding customers. When I hear that a product is “easy to use,” the phrase is not always entirely … hmm what’s the right word … accurate? It is with this product!
 
I plugged in the device to power, Ethernet, and a phone line and made three changes in the friendly Web-configuration tool. Within three minutes I was able to successfully send and receive faxes in Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition. I am amazed at how easy to use this thing really is. I have spent hours or longer with some other devices trying to get them configured just right, even with a certified engineer from that vendor sitting right next to me. Based on my previous experience, it is not supposed to be this easy.
 
Usually when something is this easy to use, huge sacrifices have been made to limit functionality. But that is not the case here. With a three minute configuration, my gateway is not acting very intelligent, but I could have spent a bit more time adding all sorts of other functionality. I could have configured digit manipulation, gateway redundancy, alternate routes, and much more. You can contact a Sales Representative for more information on capabilities. Open Text’s Partners have been thoroughly trained to implement Fax-over-IP and the new Fax Gateway product line.

 As explained in this in-depth White Paper, Open Text Fax Gateways are designed to easily integrate into virtual Fax Server environments.  To show what they look like and how they work, I’ve created this high-definition Video that illustrates how to configure one to send and receive faxes. 

The Gateway to Fax over IP

By Adam Friedmann

Last week I had the opportunity to demonstrate and train some of our partners on how to use our new analog Open Text Fax Gateway hardware, the 308. This is just one of the models available in our full line of analog and digital gateways. How did it go? It was extremely positive. Why? Many reasons, to name a few:

• The product is specifically built for faxing making it easier to configure.
• The device can handle a DocTransport failure and re-route to another available DocTransport
• The devices have been tested with an extensive number of switches.

When product management first told me that we were going to have a media gateway in our line I was a little concerned. I had worked with other media gateways in the past and found them difficult to configure for faxing.

One month later a cardboard box arrived at the office. It was the new gateway that had been pre-configured to work specifically for faxing. This is what my bosses were calling a single-purpose device. I opened the box, plugged the device in and gave it an IP address that allowed me to access it from my network.  I opened the web based graphical interface, not sure of what I would find. After making a few changes to settings I was faxing.

Next I wanted to explore some of the more advanced features.  After some adjustments I was able to get the device to route to different Fax Servers based upon dialing rules I had created. I changed a few more settings and was able to set up the device to send to redundant Fax Servers. I would send a fax from a fax machine and if the first Fax Server was available the device would route to it. I shut down the first Fax Server and sent another fax to the gateway from a fax machine and the gateway automatically routed it to the second Fax Server.

Finally I wanted to test if the gateway would automatically know if the first Fax Server was brought online. I turned the first Fax Server back on sent another fax and the gateway routed to it. Success!  

The Open Text Fax Gateways along with Open Text Fax Server provide everything needed to easily implement a Fax over IP solution.  To learn more about the Open Text Fax Gateway, click here and be sure to download our new whitepaper on virtualization while you are there.

Configuring Microsoft Exchange 2010 UM for Inbound Faxing

Feature Pack 1 of the Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition v9.4, delivers interoperability with Microsoft Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging (UM). The new UM settings allow for inbound faxes to be referred to the Fax Server instead of being processed only through Exchange 2010 UM. Faxes are now handled by a fax server but still processed where end users are typically used to receiving faxes in Outlook with Exchange 2007 UM.

The problem is that with this new technology comes the scary question that comes to mind for anyone who is going to have to implement this and is not familiar with Unified Messaging in Exchange, “Do I really have to time to install Exchange 2010 and then study how the Unified Messaging piece works just to setup inbound faxing”?  Rather than you spending days installing and reading about UM concepts, we created two videos that should pretty much get you up to speed (assuming you have about 20 minutes).

Configuring Exchange 2010 UM for Inbound Faxing – Part 1:

• How to configure Exchange 2010 to listen for CNG fax tones
• Setup a UM Dial Plan
• Setup a UM IP Gateway
• Setup a UM MailBox Policy.

Configuring Exchange 2010 UM for Inbound Faxing – Part 2:

• How to create a Receive Connector (for security)
• Configure the Open Text Fax Server
• Configure a AudioCodes MP-114 (media gateway)
• Send a test to see it work

We also have a new white paper on faxing with Exchange Server 2010 UM.   Download here.

Open Text Partner Avanquest Solutions Discusses the Value of FoIP

This article originally appeared on the Enterprise Fax over IP channel on TMCnet.

As more companies are building or expanding their IP infrastructures, the benefits of consolidation with enterprise fax over IP are becoming evident as many organizations have already invested in VoIP technology as an alternative to traditional phone communications. In a recent interview with Avanquest Solutions, Mike Rae, sales director of the U.K.-based firm, discusses some of the advantages of adopting fax over IP.

 

“Using this existing IP resource to also transmit all your fax communications delivers an even greater return on this investment. Many of the costs associated with traditional fax machines such as hardware maintenance, consumables and phone line rental disappear,” Rae said. “Analog routers that are required in order to connect fax machines to your VoIP environment can also be removed creating even greater savings. Customers with multiple sites have the greatest opportunity to save money due to the fact that a centralised fax server can now manage faxing across the whole enterprise without the need for additional telephony provision at local sites.”

 

Avanquest Solutions has been the U.K. distributor and support and training center for Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition since 1992.

 

With fax over IP, the entire solution is software-based which means it can be implemented in a virtual environment which reduced the number of physical servers required and provides high-availability and disaster recovery, Rae explained.

 

There are several efficiencies that are achieved with Open Text Fax Server, Right Fax Edition. According to Rae, fax is still the most reliable and secure point to point document delivery solution there is. 

 

“Electronic faxing dramatically reduces costs, reduces paper and speeds up business processes by allowing users to send faxes from any application in under a minute. Staff no longer has to print out documents they want to fax, wait by the fax machine while it transmits and rely on a paper-based delivery report. The whole process is replicated electronically,” Rae said. “Fax servers enhance your unified communications infrastructure by delivering inbound faxes directly into the user’s personal inbox which means faxes can be retrieved from any location, with any device, improving response times to customers and saving time.”

 

The process of sending paper documents through OpenText Fax Server is easy, too, he said. By integrating with multi-functional devices, users can login to the device, select the fax option and enter recipient’s number just as they have always done. The document is transmitted by Open Text Fax Server through their personal account, delivery notification is sent to their email address and the fax and transmission history are stored electronically.

 

“This is all achieved over your IP network. There is no need to install a fax modem on the multi-function device or connect it to an analogue phone line,” Rae added.

 

OpenText Fax Server can also act as a fax gateway allowing almost any application to automate outbound faxing and e-mail delivery replacing the manual process of printing and posting batches of documents. Thousands of customers rely on the system to deliver trade confirmations, monetary payment confirmations, purchase orders, remittances and many more critical business documents, Rae said.

 

Since inbound faxes often trigger business processes, Open Text Fax Server can act as the on-ramp into your organization. Documents such as purchase orders and transfer requests can be handed to an intelligent capture application where they can be classified so that the relevant data can be extracted and verified before being automatically uploaded into a line of business application saving time and money and reducing data-entry errors.

 

In addition, enterprise fax over IP helps companies in terms of regulatory compliance by providing a degree of visibility and control over your fax traffic, which is difficult to ascertain with traditional methods of faxing. Open Text Fax Server stores a full electronic audit trail for each document which can be passed to billing systems and document management applications for cost-tracking and compliance purposes.

 

“Many industry regulators such as the Financial Services Authority deem fax machines insecure and non-compliant because they automatically print out received documents with no way of determining the recipient or what they did with that document next,” Rae said. “A fax server allows you to see exactly who printed, annotated or viewed the document and at what date and time.”

 

According to Rae, moving to FOIP greatly improves the business case for VoIP.

 

“The consolidation of data and communications to a single IP resource reduces the total cost of ownership – one bandwidth for all voice, data and fax communications,” he said. “Switching from traditional fax to FoIP allows you to centrally host faxing for multiple locations. Fax can be integrated with other applications throughout the organization as part of automated business processes and workflow.”

Fax Archiving: How to Flatten Mountains of Paper and Give Your Fax Server a Holiday Gift

With the holidays just around the corner we find the amount of mail we receive sky-rocketing. From greetings cards to catalogs and brochures, it’s not long before the paper mountain starts taking shape. Depending on where you live in the world your own letterbox maybe a slot in the front door or, a box outside your home or, on the street.  These designs have been around for years and continue to serve as a dependable way for homes to collect their mail. The common mailbox however, was never designed to act as a long term storage area for mail. Depending on your own particular model they either become full or, prevent you from being able to open your front door.  For most of us this never becomes an issue as we continue to use a tried and tested process to manage our mail.  This process normally involves removing the mail from the collection point, distributing items to particular people in the household and recycling those pieces we no longer need.  When managing e-mail we adopt similar processes that enable us to store and manage emails away from the server. So why do so many companies continue to burden their fax servers with the long term accumulation of faxes at the point of capture? While the prospect of succumbing to a lethal avalanche of kitchenware catalogs is unlikely, mistaking your fax server for a document repository can have some negative effects of its own.

Compliance Considerations

Let’s talk about compliance for a minute. Compliance may be a term that many of us have become anesthetized to, but the fact remains that non-compliance can be costly and potentially fatal to a business.  Whether compliance relates to specific regulations, audit requests or legal discovery, a company’s ability to provide faxes related to a given transaction, process or case can mean the difference between a negligible business interruption and operational standstill. Unfortunately, solutions for compliance only reach the top of an organization’s priority list once they find themselves subject to fines and legal action, by which point it’s often too late.  (We have published a new white paper on how fax servers are critical for compliance efforts.)

Efficiently Managing and Archiving  Fax Documents

Compliance aside, there are other reasons that should motivate an organization to transition documents away from the fax server and into a secure, searchable and auditable repository. How a business categorizes its faxes impacts how usable and “findable” those faxes becomes in the future.  By leaving documents on the fax server we are essentially categorizing information by fax recipient. So what happens when an employee takes on a new position or separates from the organization? Given the volume of faxes that can be received each day how quickly can we really find that individual fax that references the customer account number solely in the body of the document? Searching for faxes in these scenarios can quickly become distracting and more importantly, expensive.  It’s also worth considering that not having the right information to hand can quickly result in an organization finding itself at a strategic disadvantage in negotiations and business conflicts.

Just like that trusty mail box and the corporate e-mail server, the fax server was never designed to act as a long term repository so, relying on it to sort, manage, secure and share documents is a strategy we might all consider avoiding. One strategy worth considering however is that of fax archiving. Fax archives not only provide a long term storage solution for fax documents but also dramatically increase the value of the faxes themselves.  By attaching a document archive they are quickly able to:

• Create secure repositories for fax storage
• Audit document access and usage by user
• Use OCR to extract text from fax images, making them highly searchable
• Age, retain and dispose of faxes according to company policy or regulation
• Share fax documents across the organization
• Make documents accessible in Microsoft SharePoint and across the web
• Relate faxes to other business documents
• Create and distribute offline fax archives to third parties
• Refocus Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition on executing fax capture and management processes versus fax storage

Many Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition users pair Open Text Document Server, Alchemy Edition with their fax server.  To decide if your organization will benefit from implementing a fax archive, ask yourself the following questions:

• Could your company ever find itself having to fulfill requests to provide fax documents to a third party such as an auditor, legal counsel or regulatory body?
• Are your faxes subject to regulations or policies that dictate their retention and/or disposition?
• Do faxes need to be shared amongst users in order to execute or support a business process?

If you answered YES to one or more of these questions you might consider attaching a document archive to your fax server. For a datasheet on Open Text Document Server, Alchemy Edition visit here.

We also have an updated overview on the Document Server, Alchemy Edition Connector for Fax Server, RightFax Edition available here.

Written by Darren Boynton with the Open Text Fax and Document Distribution Group.

Eliminating Fax Machines in Small to Medium Size Enterprises

“If a 25 person organization manually faxes 30 two-page documents daily, it is squandering approximately 1,000 man hours per year.”  Source: Mary Kauffman- The Kauffman Group

Many small to medium size organizations still use standalone fax machines to conduct daily business. What they might not realize is the amount of money they are spending annually simply to maintain a single machine.  One Fax machine can cost an average of $1000 annually to maintain. This is not even taking to account the amount of time that is wasted from retrieving these faxes from the machine and ensuring they are directed to the appropriate recipient. 

OpenText fax solutions eliminate the need for fax machines and keep businesses from losing important information, thus saving time and money. Below are some questions to take into account for deciding to implement a faxing solution to replace fax machines in your organization:

• How much do you spend annually on maintaining fax machines in your office? (paper, toner, repairs etc.)
• How much time are associates wasting on a daily basis from retrieving, and rescanning faxes from machines?
• Is vital information being lost in fax transactions?
• Would you like to streamline your business to ease the amount manual paper processes?
• Are there security and compliance issues that you face from having fax machines outputting sensitive information?
• Do you want better control and availability to see audit trails of your faxes?

 Open Text Fax Server, RighFax Edition and Fax Appliance, Fax Press Edition offer solutions for small to medium size enterprises looking to eliminate traditional fax machines and reduce the amount of lost information, increasing the compliancy and saving money.

OpenText Fax Server Business Edition is the optimal fit for small to medium size organizations. The Business Server software is a stand-alone fax server comes standard with the SMTP Gateway and allows a maximum of 30 channels.  Business Server also allows for telephony-based routing including: DID, Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS), DTMP, CSID and Automatic Number Identification (ANI).

Fax Appliance, FaxPress Edition is an all-in-one hardware and software solution that offers a variety of features ideal for small to medium size enterprises. The 2500 analog 1 channel option is the smallest option and can be purchased for under $2000. This allows companies sending and receiving fewer than 480 pages of faxes per-day to have a low cost, high ROI solution in their office. The Enterprise Redundant System is a digital option that is available in up to a 72 channel option. The available unit options are the 2500, FaxPress Desktop Edition, Premier and the Enterprise Redundant. FaxPress is the perfect fit for small to medium size organizations looking to automate their faxing process with a user friendly interface and simple to install combined solution.

Open Text Fax & Document Distribution Group has published a free guide detailing document strategies for small and medium sized enterprises and you can download it from here. 

For more information on OpenText Fax Server, RightFax Edition and Fax Appliance, FaxPress Edition visit our website at:

http://faxsolutions.opentext.com/fax-server.aspx

http://faxsolutions.opentext.com/fax-appliance.aspx

Written by Kate LeRoy with Open Text’s Fax & Document Distribution Group. 

 

Open Text Delivers Rich Fax Functions for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

The following news announcement was made today through Open Text Corporate PR…

 

Ensures that Enterprises Can Migrate to Exchange Server 2010 and Preserve Investments in Unified Messaging, Network-Based Fax Capabilities

WATERLOO, Ont. – November 9, 2009 – Open Text™ (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), a global leader in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), today announced that it has developed enterprise fax functionality seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. This ensures that enterprises can migrate to Exchange Server 2010, preserve their investments in network-based fax capability and unified messaging systems and provides the ability to access faxing from mobile devices. Open Text is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and 2009 ISV Line of Business Partner of the Year finalist.

Faxing continues to be a critical requirement for many businesses that need signatures, drawings, and other paper-based content. In industries and businesses such as banking, healthcare, mortgage companies, and patent offices, faxes are recognized as important legal documents and vital to business operation. With Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition and Exchange Server 2010, faxing becomes an integral part of the overall enterprise infrastructure, providing a strong return on investment and reducing or eliminating the need for physical fax machines.

“By developing and updating our fax solutions to work with Exchange Server 2010, we provide enterprises with continued fax functionality that is vital in many industries,” said Raul Camacho, Senior Product Manager, Open Text Fax and Document Distribution. “What’s more, since faxing is built into the unified communications infrastructure users can easily receive, view, and send faxes from a variety of devices and locations, just like email.”

“Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is now available for businesses worldwide and will help organizations reduce costs, protect communications and improve user productivity,” said Julia White, director of Exchange Product Management at Microsoft Corp. “Open Text has a history of providing products with a deep interoperability with Exchange Server. Open Text Fax Server is well-proven in the marketplace and it gives customers a fax solution that seamlessly connects with Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging.”

Automated Fax Routing in Exchange Server 2010

Working closely with Microsoft, Open Text developed the Exchange Connector for Exchange Server 2010, which routes faxes into and out of the Exchange Server 2010 system using Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, a solution offered as part of the Open Text ECM Suite. When a fax comes into an enterprise, Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging forwards it to the Open Text Fax Server, which processes the document so it can be transmitted to and viewed within Microsoft Office Outlook as a native fax message. It then routes the fax through Exchange Server to the recipient’s Outlook inbox. The original fax appears as an e-mail attachment that a user can select and view. Users can also send e-mail messages and attachments to the Fax Server from their Outlook inbox for faxing to recipients outside the enterprise.

A significant advantage of Open Text Fax Server, is that faxes are digitally protected, helping to prevent loss or unauthorized viewing of documents. Logging and auditing features provide the ability to review and track all faxes from sender to recipient.

The seamless integration of the Open Text fax technology into Exchange Server 2010 eliminates faxing as a stand-alone system that would require additional IT resources to maintain. Key features such as Active Directory® service synchronization and support for Outlook contact forms provide well-known tools for managing faxes alongside other unified messaging features. Companies can also take advantage of unified communications to have faxes routed to mobile users, who can read and respond to faxes from their smartphones.

Microsoft published a case study on how Open Text developed this solution here:

We have published a new white paper on Inbound Faxing with Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging.  Download here. 

For further information on Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition (formerly Captaris RightFax) please visit http://FaxSolutions.OpenText.com