May 1999

The IP App That's Ready For Prime Time

BY JOHN BREWER

Inside the small but burgeoning IP telephony world, much is said about real-time voice, universal messaging, Internet call waiting, and many other promising new improvements on traditional telephony services. While these dream services are closer and closer to "coming true" every day, one particular vision for IP telephony services already has a firm footing in reality. IP fax is out of the lab and turning up everywhere.

Most people are familiar with the basics of the IP fax story: today almost 100 million conventional fax machines worldwide generate a phone bill of more than $100 billion per year. Approximately 400 billion fax pages are sent annually over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Faxing accounts for as much as 40% of a typical Fortune 500 company's yearly phone bill.

IP-based faxing is proposed as a way to bring data network benefits to fax users worldwide. Today, using the Internet to transmit faxes is an even better idea than using it to transmit voice. Faxes are data files and therefore naturally lend themselves to store-and-forward handling. With store-and-forward fax, the entire document is first transmitted to a network-based server, then subsequently delivered to its destination. There is no real-time connection between the originating and destination devices. This approach overcomes network latency, which could otherwise crash a fax transmission by inducing unacceptable transmission delays.

If conventional faxing is essentially a "kluge" imposed upon a network that was built to provide a real-time connection between two extremely forgiving devices (human beings), IP fax provides more than an alternative: it offers unique benefits. PSTN-based fax transmissions are not secure or encrypted. Broadcast faxing, difficult and expensive to do using conventional equipment, is easy over IP. Automatic re-tries and never-busy fax reception improve IP fax efficiency and productivity. Fax archiving, online status, and online fax history provide useful tools for managing and tracking faxes. And fax bandwidth-on-demand supports bursts of fax activity that would otherwise result in delays and bottlenecks.

The key to success for IP fax is that it bridges the gap between the traditional PSTN and the data network.

DELIVERING THE GOODS
IP fax can be based upon essentially closed systems with proprietary protocols, but this approach conflicts with the universality of fax. The goal of IP-based fax must be to support all current fax devices in all locations, while facilitating the use of convenient and secure desktop faxing and supporting high-volume enterprise fax applications. Integration with industry-standard telephony gateways is necessary to speed worldwide deployments within existing IP networks. Peering and wholesaling must be possible in order to support traffic sharing between networks around the world.

Openness is the key to the fast growth of IP faxing. In addition to the basic T.30 fax protocol used in the PSTN, other standards must be supported to encourage interoperability. Relevant industry standards include: HTML for Web interfaces, TCP for Internet transmission, T.37 and SMTP for e-mail integration, and T.38 for those who demand real-time transmissions. Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) should be supported to ensure consistent network management. Standard back office support is necessary in order to reduce the complexity of integrating with billing engines. Settlement capabilities - both bilateral and multilateral - must exist as well. (Visit the IETF and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Web sites, www.ietf.org and www.itu.int, for more information on industry standards.)

AIMS AND ASPIRATIONS
The goal of IP fax is to realize an architecture that can touch the PSTN at a million local points in order to minimize delivery cost of faxes to conventional fax machines. Fax jobs must be accepted from all devices, including fax machines, desktop computers (via fax clients and e-mail systems), and enterprise applications. Broadcasts must be accepted from desktops and fax machines, then expanded and sent to thousands of recipients. Fax mailboxes must be available, and account access must be provided from any Web-connected computer in the world. Users should be able to view the real-time status of all faxes, print faxes using high-quality printers, forward faxes electronically, and distribute documents to a mix of fax devices and e-mail systems.

An ideal fax application architecture would be split into tiers, with management and operations functions in the top tier (behind the firewall), fax transaction handling in the middle tier, and telephony gateways at the bottom, connected to both the IP network and the PSTN. User self-provisioning over the Web reduces demand for customer services. Intelligent delivery algorithms direct fax jobs to gateways that can deliver at low cost, while avoiding delivery delays at heavily burdened gateways. The architecture must scale to thousands of telephony connections located around the world. An open systems approach is essential so that Network Service Providers' (NSPs') existing investment in telephony gateways can be fully leveraged.

Much has been made of IP-enabled fax machines. While these units represent a real leap forward for the fax industry, it must be remembered that the vast majority of fax devices will continue to be PSTN based. The network must support delivery to all fax destinations in order to maintain universality.

WHY IP FAX?
Both NSPs and corporations are attracted to IP fax as an outsourced service offering. The NSP is motivated by enhanced services in general, which develop new revenue streams and create higher value customer relationships. Within corporations, certain departments already do a significant amount of fax broadcasting through outside fax service bureaus. Outsourced store-and-forward IP fax can provide these users with self-managed broadcasts, but the biggest drivers of IP fax adoption within corporations are actually e-mail and enterprise faxing.

E-mail fax allows users to originate and receive faxes simply via their familiar e-mail interface. This capability is especially powerful because store-and-forward faxing is a natural adjunct to standard e-mail. Full interoperability with SMTP mail systems is achieved by supporting the T.37 standard endorsed by the IETF and ITU. This capability allows any e-mail user to send and receive faxes from popular SMTP-compliant programs.

An "in the cloud" solution allows users to originate faxes from their SMTP-compliant mail systems without any on-premises equipment whatsoever. The user simply creates an e-mail job using the destination fax number and the domain name provided by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) as the address - e.g., [email protected]. The IP fax server receives the mail message, converts the message text and attached documents to fax format, and places a phone call to the destination fax number. Users receive confirmation via e-mail once the fax is delivered.

Enterprise applications such as SAP software generate large volumes of point-to-point faxes. Integrating these applications to outsourced IP fax services provides flexible bandwidth on demand, as well as enormous savings from elimination of on-premises fax telephony equipment.

For the CIO, the benefits of outsourced IP fax fall into four categories: higher employee productivity, more secure communications, lower operational burden, and lower telephony costs.

Employee Productivity
For users, faxing to and from the desktop represents a major improvement in productivity. It takes about 1/5 as long to send an average fax from the desktop as it does to send it from a standalone fax machine. IP fax at the desktop complements and integrates with corporate e-mail. In many corporate environments, IT departments are already using LAN fax servers to move faxing capability to the desktop. However, on-premises fax servers can become swamped by bursts of traffic. Outsourcing traffic to the ISP can provide unlimited bandwidth on demand.

Inbound IP fax services offer a huge productivity impact. Instead of receiving faxes at the conventional fax machine, individuals or group administrators can have faxes captured "in the cloud." Faxes can be delivered to the user as e-mail attachments and they can then be distributed electronically to users' e-mail accounts.

Security
IP fax transmissions are encrypted and sent over Secure Sockets Layer connections, users are authenticated every time they log on, and fax servers within the network swap verification certificates to provide a high level of privacy and security.

Enterprise Applications
Many businesses depend on enterprise applications that drive a high volume of point-to-point faxes. IP fax services that integrate with applications such as SAP make it possible to move the entire fax volume directly to the Internet.

Cost Savings
The cost of faxing varies from one organization to the next. Here are some very broad cost comparisons between different methods of faxing:

Conventional fax machines can be connected to an IP fax service using a simple re-dialer to save 24% or more on fax costs, deriving from the generally lower Internet rates for long distance and international faxing. In addition, users gain the benefits of automatic re-tries, online fax status, and fax history.

IP faxing can save businesses almost 50% of the cost of operating on-premises LAN fax servers. Outsourcing moves the modem/telephony port infrastructure from the company premises out to the cloud. Users save on operating and maintenance costs, while isolating themselves from the cost of technology obsolescence.

Finally, adding a desktop scanner and switching to an IP fax service allows users to eliminate the fax machine completely, saving a whopping 69% on every page sent.

THE NEXT STEPS FOR IP FAX
Integrating with remote access concentrators (RAC) and IP telephony gateways from vendors like Cisco, Ascend, and 3Com allows NSPs to deploy large-scale IP fax delivery capacity very quickly. These devices are used to make fax deliveries via local telephony ports as well as accepting jobs from re-dialer-connected fax machines. Within the tiered architecture, the ISP manages its IP fax service from a relatively small number of application management servers and gatekeepers. This simplifies network design and makes large deployments more cost-effective.

Peering and settlement between fax networks is the final step in maximizing worldwide IP fax efficiency. Enabling network operators to route faxes between them allows ISPs to offer termination services on a bilateral or multilateral basis. Larger networks can sell fax services to smaller networks on a wholesale basis. Standards proposed as part of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) TIPHON project will allow operators to utilize major settlement vendors such as iPass for Internet fax services.

The result is an IP telephony application that lowers costs for customers, increases productivity, and even allows users to do some things they've never tried before. It may sound like a dream, but IP fax is here today.

John Brewer is vice president marketing and business development for NetCentric Corporation. NetCentric develops FaxStorm, the leading Internet fax solution for next-generation telcos, ISPs, and carriers. For more information, please visit the company's Web site at www.netcentric.com.

NSPs today, including carriers like GTE in the United States, and Singapore Telecom in Asia. Even specialized service networks such as New York-based .comfax provide a broad range of IP fax services. What features and capabilities should an IP fax solution include? Here's a checklist of important factors to keep in mind:

Types Of Fax Services:

• Desktop to fax machine, fax machine to desktop.
• Web to fax machine, fax machine to Web.
• Fax machine to fax machine (using IP as a transport).
• E-mail to fax machine, both simple text and with attachments.
• Fax reception with e-mail notification or delivery (SMTP/MIME attachment).
• Self-initiated, self-administered fax broadcasts.
• Software Development Kit (object-oriented, please) to extend and integrate the system.
• Integrates with best-of-breed products, such as desktop fax clients (e.g., Symantec's WinFax Pro), LAN fax servers (e.g., Omtool's FaxSR), e-mail systems (e.g., Microsoft, Lotus, SMTP), desktop scanners (e.g., Visioneer Paperport), MSPs (e.g., Brother, Panasonic), enterprise applications (e.g., SAP, DAZEL, Vantive).
• Allows integration with desktops and browsers (Outlook, Netscape, IE).

Encryption:

• All faxes encrypted while crossing the Internet.
• Advanced RSA encryption technology.
• Encryption used at all stages of the system (client-server and server-server).
• User authentication.
• Authentication certificate system such as Verisign rather than simple password.
• All aspects of the system authenticated (provides "spoof-proof" billing) .
• Reference networks.

Web-based Account Access (Via Web, users can):

• Provision account.
• Sign up for new services.
• Read faxes received.
• Send faxes.
• Check balances.
• Get price quotes.
• Change account information.

Robust Customer Care Tools:

• SNMP MIBs for monitoring the hardware and software.
• Easy and complete CSR access to user accounts.
• Successful deployment by major service providers (e.g., GTE).

The following sample comparisons are NetCentric figures based on average PSTN and IP transmission rates as well as cost of equipment, supplies, and operational support and the end user costs associated with faxing (i.e., labor costs associated with the time to send a fax). Actual costs vary significantly depending on equipment manufacturer, IP fax service provider, telecom carrier, and more.

$1.71

$0.53

$0.68

$0.36

$1.71

$1.27

$0.41

$0.31

$1.18

$0.90