While cloud computing is a heavily-discussed topic these days, not often is it discussed in relation to fax technology. Folks in the b2b world usually do not readily associate fax with such modern notions as “the cloud,” but there is much to be said about the relationship between fax and cloud-based services, mainly the notion of “fax as a service.”

A recent webinar held by EasyLink explored some of the important points surrounding fax as a service, or cloud-based fax. Pamela Bernardino, vice president of Product Management and Marketing for EasyLink noted some of the cross-industry challenges for businesses, one of which is automating paper-centric processes while keeping costs down, staying competitive, and not jeopardizing the customer experience.

Kenneth Ericksen, director of Product Development, touched more on the benefits of cloud computing in general, and then how it relates to fax solutions. He mentioned that fax in the cloud makes certain challenges more easily approachable and easily solved.

Ericksen discussed some of EasyLink’s cloud-based workflow features including features that are integrated with core messaging capabilities, the ability to support email, fax, and scanned mail. He noted that the cloud-based data capture and management solution is designed for straight-through-processing and has the ability to handle highly complex document types in different formats.

Bernardino went on to discuss the importance of evaluating a cloud service provider. She said that it’s vital to evaluate a provider on two main categories of service: business evaluation criteria and technology evaluation criteria.

Scalability is also one of the most important capabilities of any solution. A scalable solution will best serve the overall growth of the network and provide flexibility when building out communications infrastructure.

Ultimately, the benefits of moving fax to the cloud can be huge for the business with improved communications and billing procedures, and reduced cost of ownership. To check out more of what the webinar explored, listen to it in full here.