Sagemcom,a global leader in software and appliance based SIP/IP fax and enterprise content management solutions, continues to work closely with AudioCodes (News - Alert), a manufacturer of advance Voice over IP (VoIP) and converged VoIP and data networking products and applications to service providers and enterprises. Sagemcom’s relationship with AudioCodes has become increasingly focused at a global channel level as opportunities continue to expand.

As fax server applications grow in demand, AudioCodes brings Media Gateway (News - Alert) and Enterprise Session Border Controller (E-SBC) devices to interconnect the fax server application software to and enterprises public networks, IP-PBX (News - Alert), PBX, and SIP Trunks. “In the past, software applications had been using legacy PCI form factor boards for the conversion between the TDM world and the software application,” said Percy. “Those boards required specialized servers that had the appropriate sized slots in them, and because they needed those PCI (News - Alert) slots it limited the physical configuration or installation that you could use to deploy a fax as an application.” Migrating to new architecture with T.38 interfacing over to gateway dramatically improves flexibility and efficiency of deployment.

Fax continues to be critical in key industries, such as healthcare, finance, insurance, especially for the transfer of legal documents. Fax service and equipment continue to offer compelling business opportunities with a projected  multi-billion dollar market size over the next few years. Fax over IP(FoIP) represents the most dynamic element within this opportunity spectrum associated with the aggressive replacement of traditional boarded fax-server solutions as part of the ongoing global TDM to IP migration effort.

In the podcast, Nikolopoulos commented, “From an overall trend perspective what we are seeing is SIP trunking, UC optimized solutions,  survivability, virtualization, and seamless FoIP interoperability fundamentally based on T.38 standard.”T.38 to the average IT manager is a protocol used in conjuction with SIP to transfer fax image information and often used as opposed to G711 packetization. T.38 has become the dominant transport standard mechanism for fax applications.

Nikolopoulos continued, “Fax can be seen as an intersection point with respect to multiple eco-systems. Fax plays into the enterprise content management (ECM), unified communications (UC),and enterprise resource planning (ERP) spaces.” Because of the inherent complexities in these eco-systems, there is tremendous opportunity for professional services offerings to come in and streamline deployment, providing effective low-cost and robust solutions.

The two companies also plan to leverage their existing business partnerships with Microsoft; more specifically, Sagemcom is a Microsoft Gold Partner and AudioCodes is one of the few certified gateway vendors associated with Microsoft UC offerings.The two companies are looking to move their engagement to the next level with tighter integrated offerings, creating a single appliance and terminating network connections.

Listen to the podcast here.