OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

Countless businesses use Microsoft Office 365 for everything from email and calendar services to document access and collaboration. They have already shown their smarts and thriftiness by reducing onsite hardware and software and working in the cloud. So why are some still relying on paper-based faxing and the expensive hardware, supplies and maintenance it requires? Maybe they don’t know about RightFax or Fax Appliance.

OpenText helps thousands of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) around the world manage and deliver their business-critical documents. We have dozens of integration options with the most common back-office and other applications has made it extremely attractive to people who don’t want to buy (or learn) new software. One of the most popular recent integrations is with Office 365.

By integrating Fax Appliance or RightFax with Office 365, customers enjoy immediate upfront savings, increased security, and less time shuffling back and forth between workstations and shared standalone fax machines. In cases where sensitive and/or legally binding documents are required to be sent to third parties, fax machines in public areas produce highly visible paper documents and pose a serious risk to information security – potentially resulting in hefty regulatory fines. Our solutions allow you to manage user roles and permissions and fax from your desktop to erase this threat.

We have seen significant benefits for customers who use OpenText’s rich integration with O365. These include:

• More productive employees: No more time-consuming printing, manual faxing, and tracking.

• Lower telecom, paper, and equipment costs: Consolidate phone resources for faxing and stop paying for fax paper, cartridges, and machine maintenance, eliminate costs for filing, long-term archival and manual retrieval of paper faxes.

• Less fax preparation: Any that can be printed can be faxed.

• Improved efficiency: Send higher quality communication more quickly by faxing directly from  Office 365 via Print-to-Fax or email.

• PDF routing: Route incoming faxes to  Office 365 as PDF attachments.

• MFP integration: Fax through our fax solutions without purchasing phone lines and costly fax kits for multiple MFPs.

• Improved audit, compliance, and legal readiness: Audit trails are legally recognized making it easy to provide proof of compliance.

• Document centralization: Keep all your communications in one place by using the  Office 365 email client to send and receive faxes.

• Support of green initiatives: Save trees (and money) by getting rid of a lot of paper.

That’s just what I can think of off the top of my head – basically, if you’re a SMB that uses Office 365 and also needs to fax, OpenText can help. If savings and security alone aren’t enough to pique your interest learn more about the benefits and integration listing from Fax Appliance and RightFax.

The use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is becoming increasingly popular in everyday business. Mobile devices are used in virtually every industry and have become an integral element of core business processes. Let’s look at the three major ways in which mobility trends impact organizations:

1. Mobile devices use a wide range of differing operating systems

2. Employees are bringing their own devices into the workplace, driving the need for enterprise-grade Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) strategies

3. Consumer applications are mobile, and employees expect business apps to follow

Gartner predicts that by 2014, 90 percent of organizations will support corporate applications on personal mobile devices . In line with these trends, the need for mobile access to RightFax has become a priority. To this end, OpenText teamed up with Cortado, a leading provider of virtual desktop technology.

Cortado Corporate Server
Integrating mobile devices into corporate IT structures poses a challenge to administrators because of the wide variety of devices and their varying operating systems and security features. Cortado Corporate Server provides users with the solution to accommodating different mobile platforms: it gives employees with smartphones and tablet PCs secure access to corporate network resources and allows them to use traditional desktop functions while on the go, just as if they were at their workstation in the office. Users can access files and information on the corporate network at any time with their mobile devices, and either print directly to the nearest printer or send documents via fax. On the backend, the Cortado Corporate Server acts as a mobile device management system and allows secure management of users, profiles, and policies.

Cortado Connector for RightFax
The Cortado Connector for RightFax simply integrates RightFax with the Cortado Corporate Server. This module is the interface between Cortado Corporate Server and RightFax. Utilizing the Cortado software, the module will pick up the Cortado application output files and send them out through the RightFax server. Most common file formats in Windows environments are supported. Fax status reports must be configured within RightFax and can be sent to the fax sender’s mailbox.

Description of the RightFax – Cortado Integration
Cortado Corporate Server’s integration with RightFax allows users with a mobile device or tablet to send documents via fax either from within the office environment or remotely. Cortado enables those documents to be retrieved from a file-share on the organization’s local network or from the local device itself. This overcomes security and compliance issues customers face when they are, for example, out of the office and trying to send a document via fax, but are unable to use the organization’s central RightFax server.

The Result
Cortado Corporate Server and RightFax work together to offer customers numerous benefits:

• Fax documents from a mobile device with ease

• Send any document as a fax – whether from the corporate network, local directories on the device, or as an attachment from an email program

• Trigger and fax up-to-date database reports

• Reduce data traffic by eliminating download of centrally-stored files

• Create fax documents on the fly on your smartphone or tablet PC

• Receive fax status notifications on the device

For organizations, the result of the RightFax and Cortado Corporate Server integration is a solution that brings a reduction in cost and IT administration, while simultaneously increasing productivity, security, and compliance.

RightFax & Cortado: The right fax solution for every BYOD strategy!

Martin van Ginkel
Strategic Alliances Manager EMEA
OpenText Corporation

Who doesn’t enjoy the infectious laughter of a baby? If you’re trying to get through a long and difficult day, it serves as a much needed reminder of the real reason most of us endure the difficult times. More than 9 million people worldwide took time out of their ordinary and stressful lives to watch this little boy break into smiles and giggles. And what could cause the adorable tot to erupt into fits of uncontrollable joy? Ripping a piece of paper. As adults, we know the destruction of paper and the devastation of countless trees is no laughing matter. In the United States, we use enough office paper each year to build a 10-foot high wall that’s 6,815 miles long, or two and a half times the distance from New York to Los Angeles.

The moral of this story is twofold – it’s about saving the planet, trees and resources for future generations, and it’s also about saving money and resources today that affect the profitability of your business. You can locate the recycle bins and make an honest effort to properly dispose of paper, but you can do more. Look at your work environment, whether small business or large enterprise, it’s easier than you think to cut your paper dependency and save a forest or two. Faxing is one area where you can make a big difference. With OpenText RightFax, you can replace traditional, standalone fax machines with a Fax over IP-based solution that turns outdated, paper processes into efficient, digital workflows–reducing the paper, the time and resource to send and receive fax communications. RightFax also helps meet compliance laws by creating an audit trail should you need to locate that all important document.

Green lecture over. Can we go back to the baby now? Reach into the recycle bin and pull out another piece of paper to make him laugh so we can all smile.

Looking for a simple and cost effective green solution? Fax servers provide real solutions without the hype!

Fax technology is ubiquitous and faxing is recognized as one of the few electronic mediums where documents can be easily transferred and tracked in real-time. Thus, faxing remains an important component of business communications today.

A modern fax server provides an organization with the flexibility to distribute virtually any document from any application, using a central server integrated into a company’s network. Fax servers are purchased to replace fax machines, leverage investments in multi-function printers or automate part or all of a manual paper based process (for example, sending a fax automatically from a CRM or ERP application or routing a fax based on information contained in the fax).

Fax server purchases are generally justified on the cost savings that they drive within the first twelve months of implementation. But there are many other benefits that a fax server provides, including improved employee productivity and organizational effectiveness, process improvement, leveraging IP and VoIP infrastructure investments, document tracking for regulatory purposes, paper wastage reduction, storage benefits and meeting compliance and information security needs.

Want to learn more about fax servers? A great place to start is the WindowsITPro eBook “The Essential Guide to Fax Servers”.
Matthew Brine
Matthew Brine is the Vice President for Fax and Document Distribution at Open Text. He can be contacted at mbrine@opentext.com.

The new Open Text Fax & Document Distribution Group site (formerly Captaris) is now here: http://faxsolutions.opentext.com