VoIP and Fax: Great Marriage
You Want It All? OK.
Getting all your office communication needs in one place is a very tempting idea. Reducing the number of companies you pay each month for communications technology and services is almost guaranteed to save you money.
Convenience
Voice over IP is bringing a much-anticipated unification to office technology, combining auto attendants, assignable extensions, forwarding to mobile phones, SMS alerts and notifications, fax to email and email fax just for starters.
The ability to mix and match services, to configure your system to meet your unique needs, and to try out new emerging technologies easily are all very attractive components of moving your office communications to the cloud.
Companies like RingCentral, Nextiva, ViaTalk, Voice Carrier and 8×8 give you ways to get everything you need in one neat package.
Convergence
One frustrating aspect of advances in technology is obsolescence. We invest time, money, training, facilities into a specific way of doing things only to find in a few short years that method is no longer desireable and support for it is being dropped from software suites or service provider offerings.
Fax is a way of doing things that became a defacto expectation. Many were sure the advent of online messaging and Voice over IP would be the end of fax, but it appears the opposite is true. Pulling fax into online technologies is breathing a new breath of life into fax. Combining the broad installation-base of fax with the convenience of internet-based VoIP systems is not only a no-brainer, it is good for business.
See also:
Is Fax Dead?
Maximizing Team Productivity Using Online Faxing.
FoIP Defined.
IP Fax Machines: Worthwhile?