TMCnews Featured Article

September 09, 2010

Sagemcom Partners with IKON for Reseller Agreement to Deliver IP Fax

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Advanced IP fax server solutions provider, Sagemcom has entered a reseller agreement with IKON Office Solutions Inc., a Ricoh company and provider of innovative document management solutions and services. Under the terms of the new agreement, IKON will offer Sagemcom’s North American version of OpenLine PR Server fax archival and approval routing solutions.

Sagemcom recently participated in a TMCnet podcast with Executive Editor Erin Harrison and shared first-hand how this agreement with IKON is beneficial for the company. In essence, it is a “double-bonus” as OpenLine integrates with MFPs, which act as an onramp of documents, capturing fax documents for online use, according to Sagemcom's Sabrina Stratford. IKON is an expert in this field and offer locally-based sales and service representatives to deliver the best service and value to Sagemcom customers.

Stratford said Sagemcom depends on IKON to deliver the solution right to the customer. Sagemcom recently had the opportunity to attend the IKON Solutions conference and IKON’s focus was overcoming the threat to technology adoption. Sagemcom recognized the opportunity to work with IKON, she said, to deliver the optimal value to the customer they hoped to achieve when they made the purchase in the first place.

In addition, IKON will lead the charge to complete domestic market implementations of the Sagemcom solution, which will enable users to store documents online and on the PC instead of in paper form or on the MFP itself. As companies go digital, decision makers want to do the same thing with their faxing technology. Users do not have to leave the desktop to fax, which improves productivity and it allows users to add signatures electronically.

Sagemcom, through the IKON partnership, can deliver FoIP-enabled faxing allows for faxing within the all-IP environment. As for target markets, it is important to note that fax is still everywhere – especially in environments where documents require a signature. Any paper-intensive business and those who need to keep information secure for compliance is a perfect fit for the Sagemcom solution offered by IKON.

“OpenLine PR Server, with its hybrid fax archival/document routing engine, is cost- and application-optimized for ECM/MFP applications targeted by IKON,” said Jean Champagne (News - Alert), General Manager, Sagemcom Canada Inc. “The OpenLine PR Server plays a dual role in helping SMBs and enterprises meet their integrated document management (IDM) and cost-effective faxing objectives for capturing, storing, managing and delivering documents across an enterprise or SMB.”

This line of solutions is designed for the organization seeking to improve efficiencies within an application ecosystem made up of Unified Communications (News - Alert), Enterprise Resource Planning and Enterprise Content Management.The timing of this agreement falls in line with industry trends as multifunction printers (MFPs) continue to be a major market driver for accelerating the migration of TDM to IP.

A recent fax server analyst report by Davidson Consulting shows MFPs will drive the second most growth in the market, potentially half of all fax server revenues by the end of 2013.According to Gartner (News - Alert), the use of fax servers in the enterprise is expected to increase by as much as 80 percent by 2012 and the global FoIP market will grow to $345 million by 2013, up from $130 million in 2009.

As these trends continue, IKON will be positioned well to help customers to facilitate the transition to an all-IP environment by offering the Sagemcom OpenLine PR fax archival and management appliance built on the XMediusFAX fax over IP technology. This technology can be easily deployed with MFPs and other network-based management infrastructures.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Erin Harrison

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