Innovative, productivity-enhancing Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) solutions are being deployed by enterprises worldwide, improving how they do business by enhancing access to information and people anywhere, anytime and advancing the speed of overall communications.
To benefit from UC, enterprises need to create the right foundation and make fax communication a seamless part of this information technology evolution.
As the world’s first and only fax solution to operate inside a Cisco (News - Alert) Integrated Services Router (ISR), the Cisco AXP–XMediusFAX Fax over IP (FoIP) solution is a vital and cost-effective part of a complete UC strategy.
Created by advanced fax services provider, Sagem-Interstar (News - Alert), XMediusFax is a fast highly cost-effective, secure, and reliable IP fax server solution that has dominated the global FoIP market since 2002.
Operating locally within the Cisco Application eXtension Platform (AXP), the Cisco AXP– XMediusFAX solution is particularly beneficial for branch office environments.
The Cisco AXP offers a standards-based Linux hosting environment within the Cisco ISR router. It consists of an Application Runtime Network (APPRE) Module, which is a blade hosted within the Cisco 2800 and 3800 Series ISRs, and the Cisco AXP software (hardened Linux OS).
In addition, the Cisco AXP provides the ability for end-users, third-party system integrators, managed service providers and ISVs to integrate custom services into the Cisco ISR.
First launched in April, the Cisco AXP–XMediusFAX FoIP solution consists of the Cisco AXP virtualized hosting environment, supplying dedicated system resources, and XMediusFAX Enterprise (AXP Edition) application software. XMediusFAX supports deployments that utilize Cisco Unified Communications Manager in H.323, SIP or Media Gateway (News - Alert) Control Protocol (MGCP) mode. It enables users to send and receive faxes directly from their e-mail clients, desktop, MFP or any mobile device.
The Cisco AXP-XMediusFAX FoIP solution helps streamline costs, improve document communication, collaboration, and productivity, while also providing more value to Cisco ISRs deployed worldwide in enterprises today.
Some major benefits of the Cisco AXP-XMediusFAX FoIP solution include:
- Enables highly secure fax communication within the Cisco ISR environment.
- Routes sensitive documents to designated recipients and devices for easier access anywhere, anytime, in the office or outside.
- Facilitates compliance requirements (for example, SOX, HIPAA, PCI).
- Provides a distributed redundant fax architecture with central Web management.
- Eliminates the costs of traditional faxing, such as printing, paper, toner, maintenance, dedicated analog lines and fax hardware.
- Significantly reduces Reducing hardware footprint in the enterprise branch, eliminating single-purpose server hardware, thereby decreasing energy consumption – a green initiative.
- Lowers Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
- Enables simplified deployment and administration with the XMediusFAX software-only solution (no expensive fax boards or third-party integration required).
“We wanted a Unified Communications solution that would provide us with better document communication records and traceability, specifically for faxes. Bottom line, we wanted to integrate the fax capability into our overall branch communication strategy. One of the unique things about the SAGEM solution running on the Cisco AXP is that it allows us to embed IP fax capabilities directly into our branch router. This optimizes performance, and gives us several cost advantages,” said Luis Suarez, director of information technology at H.I.G. Capital.
As a Sagem-Interstar (News - Alert) customer, H.I.G. Capital successfully adopted a trial installation of the IP fax solution on Cisco AXP in March. As a global private investment firm with over four billion dollars of capital under management, H.I.G. Capital works in a very fast-paced global environment which handles legally binding, mission-critical documents for multi-million-dollar transactions.
According to Suarez, the Sagem-Interstar IP fax solution on Cisco AXP is critical to their business and provides them with access to fax documents anywhere. This helps H.I.G. to secure multi-million-dollar transactions, while maintaining an audit trail for our records management requirements.
“Sagem-Interstar is taking advantage of the Cisco AXP third-party hosting services on the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) adds industry-leading Fax over IP to an already comprehensive Unified Communications solution,” said Dave Frampton, vice president in Cisco’s Access Routing Technology Group. “This complete solution delivers significant cost and performance benefits for mission-critical fax services in many industries, while facilitating highly secure communication, collaboration and regulatory compliance.”
The Sagem-Interstar IP fax solution on Cisco AXP can be integrated into the Cisco Unified Communications Manager, and is available on a variety of hardware options and a broad range of Cisco ISRs. It is also a good fit for virtualization strategies since its boardless technology enables IT staff to efficiently combine and manage common resources for diverse applications, further enhancing IP Telephony and UC deployments.
For more information on the XMediusFAX fax server solution and associated applications including Cisco AXP/ISR, visit Sagem-Interstar: http://www.sagem-interstar.com/ or http://www.sagem-interstar.com/fax-server-software/xmediusfax/cisco_axp_e.htm.
Michelle Robart is a Contributing Editor at TMCnet. To read more of her articles please visit her columnist page.
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