September 1999
Fax Over IP — THE REAL KILLER APP
BY LARA CLARKE AND SIMON NEHME
An estimated 30-40 percent of international telephone calls carry faxes, and a majority
of companies are unaware of what they spend on fax transmission. Consider some numbers:
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), $93 billion is spent worldwide on fax
transmissions, with an expected growth rate in excess of 15 percent. Pitney Bowes
estimates that the average Fortune 500 company spends over $15 million annually on fax
messaging. But for most companies, fax expenses are simply viewed as an inescapable cost
of doing business.
Recently, two Canadian companies combined their products and services to build a high
performance, international, Internet-based fax network with gateways in over 40 countries.
This network, operated by Protus IP Solutions from their Ottawa headquarters, offers
companies a cost-effective IP fax transmission service. The network application was
developed using the VBVoice and VBFax computer telephony application design tools from
Pronexus, another Ottawa-based company.
HOW IT WORKS
Protus customers can send faxes directly from traditional fax machines using an
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) interface or an autodialer. They can also send directly
from their workstation using modems, e-mail accounts, or the client application. Remote
and mobile users also benefit by using Protus services to send and receive faxes on their
personal computer from wherever they may be by simply accessing any regular Internet
account and having the calling charges billed directly to their home/office account.
The Protus servers use “store-and-forward” technology to analyze data, to
call an ACD module that matches telephone numbers against a routing table, and to
determine the most efficient delivery path, using least cost routing, to the Protus server
closest to the final destination. Each server is connected to a local telephone company
through standard analog telephone lines, taking advantage of local calling rates in each
country.
The Protus network of servers also ensures security of the transmissions across the
Internet through multiple methods of authentication and encryption embedded within the
Protus network architecture.
A key strength of Protus, and one that sets it apart from other offerings in its field,
is its operational systems: network management, administration, and billing. Subscribers
can track message progress during transmission — even while the message is still en
route. To make account management and billing even easier, Protus has also developed a
real-time billing and administration application that can be set up for very targeted
tracking, right down to assigning costs to specific departmental or project budgets.
“Obviously, using the Internet to transmit data over long distances results in
substantial cost savings for our customers — sometimes in excess of 90 percent of
traditional long distance telephone service providers,” says Simon Nehme, co-founder
and CTO of Protus. “Subscribers to the network pay only local calling charges and can
still receive faxes from senders not on the Protus network. Also, unlike voice
transmissions using the Internet as a backbone, Quality of Service is not compromised with
fax over IP.”
Mr. Nehme selected the Pronexus rapid application design (RAD) tools for development of
the server software because of the intuitive and user friendly interface, because of the
built-in telephony operations, and because the application design tools are based in
Visual Basic, one of the industry’s most popular programming languages.
“The ability to leverage Visual Basic and its component add-ons enabled Internet,
e-mail, and database functionality that are critical to the Protus service offering,”
says Nehme. “Pronexus software is easy to use, adheres to open industry standards,
and is royalty free — unlike most other products in CT and IVR development.”
Another key benefit to using these toolkits together is their inherent interoperability
and the ability to use one development interface for both the IVR front-end and the fax
components.
Businesses looking to reduce their telecom spending should consider Internet faxing as
an alternative for sending long distance faxes. While voice over the Internet has been
receiving most of the hype, fax has already made its case as the first real killer
Internet telephony application. The cost savings afforded by using the Internet are
significant, and, unlike voice, the Internet poses no performance problems for fax.
Internet faxing is a winning proposition for businesses and individual users alike.
Lara Clarke is a communications specialist at Pronexus, and Simon Nehme is chief
technology officer of Protus IP Solutions. For more information about the Protus Global
Internet-based Next-Generation Fax Services, please visit www.protus.com
or call 613-733-0000.
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