The new Fax Appliance Feature Pack 2 for Fax Appliance A102 and A104 is now available.  The OpenText Fax Appliance family of plug and play products is designed to simplify overall deployment and use while providing a cost effective alternative to MFP fax kits as well as traditional fax boards and remote fax servers.   We’ve made quite a few changes based on the key capabilities requested by our customers to further enhance our Fax Appliance.

Here is a snapshot of just a few of the new features:

• Receive faxes in PDF file format
• Cloud-based email support (e.g. Google Apps)
• Import contacts to shared phonebook
• Import phonebook entries from FaxPress
• And many more exciting features 

For the complete Fax Appliance feature list, please visit: http://fax-appliance.com/features/

You can also attend the Nov. 1 webinar to learn more.  Register here.

For additional information, please visit www.fax-appliance.com.

Recently I visited with Ricoh Netherlands to get a better idea of how they integrate with the RightFax MFP Module. It was a fascinating. After the end-user walks up to the device and provides their credentials, they can tweak almost every setting they would have access to in the full FaxUtil client. They can enter cover sheet notes, complete destination information, and much much more.

It really is impressive and I encourage you to look in to their solutions. But first watch my video on the topic:

Just before the Global Fax Summit, I drove over to Amstelveen in the Netherlands where I live to visit with HP at their offices. My purpose was to collect footage of a person using an HP MFP to send a fax. What with GFS, getting sick, and other projects, I only just recently had a chance to edit it down to a nice video. So here it is.

What you’ll see in this video is a simple scenario of walking up to the MFP, scanning in a document, and pressing send. Regardless of whether I have a single MFP or hundreds, configuration in RightFax is incredibly simple and the EDC Monitor allows the admin to watch the entire process of sending the fax.

When the user walks up to the MFP, they can be logged in automatically as a generic “WALKUP” user, enter in their credentials using the number pad or touchscreen, or use the SafeCom system which requires them to simply swipe their access card. SafeCom makes the process of sending a fax even easier than before. Its pretty cool.

Watch the video and let me know what you think of it here in the comments.

By

Chris Myers, OpenText Regional Sales Director- Eastern Region

During my tenure at OpenText we have had a variety of ways to fax enable branch office settings.  Recently, I have seen customers really start to understand the concept that RightFax can help address fax costs across a wide variety of branch office settings.  Given the multiple ways RightFax and supporting technology can be deployed, it is no wonder that one of these options resonates with so many customers. 

The first scenario I see gaining traction is fax enabling an MFP at the branch office by adding the MFP Connector to the MFP device.  This allows the MFP to communicate with a centralized RightFax server.  This is a low cost, moderately-high functionality configuration.  One thing to be aware of is how the “print” jobs transferred over the network from the branch office MFP to a centralized RightFax server will affect bandwidth between sites. 

The second scenario getting attention, when traffic warrants it, is leveraging an existing branch office IP infrastructure and its data connection and converting the inbound faxes to t.38 packets and transferring those packets to a centralized RightFax server typically housed in the data center.  This scenario is more acceptable when the branch office has IT staff to maintain the gateway and the branch fax volume justifies the investment.  This configuration has minimal impact on the bandwidth requirement as the gateway converts the images to t.38 upon receipt. 

Another scenario, receiving a very receptive response from customers and prospects, is the idea of installing RightFax Branch Office Server.  The RightFax Branch Office Server gives a branch office its own scaled down RightFax server that works in conjunction with a larger, centralized RightFax server at HQ.  This is the preferred, and recommended, configuration for organizations that have branch offices with larger fax volumes and the IT staff to support this architecture. 

Having multiple options allows our channel partners to help customers and prospects maximize their usage of software to comply with the many technical and business requirements faced by organizations today.  For questions and additional information, email captaris.sales@opentext.com.

My Dearest Valentine,

We’ve been together for nearly 25 years.

I can trust you with all my secrets.

You are reliable and trustworthy, everything I’ve ever dreamed of.

You reduce costs, streamline business processes and improve productivity.

You have extensive tracking, auditing and reporting components.

You integrate with SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and many others.

No one can compare.

It’s no wonder people love you.

You leverage Ricoh, Xerox, Konica Minolta, HP and every other MFD/MFP.

You have a hosted service that is rich, scalable and fully integrated.

Your secure document delivery solution enables certified document exchange between two parties for most file types.

Call centers, mortgage processors, law firms, financial institutions and healthcare organizations love you.

We at OpenText love you.

Companies around the world love you.

You are RightFax, the world’s leading fax server and the fastest growing Internet Fax solution.

–Share your RightFax Valentine poem. We’d love to hear from you.–

By Jim Wieser, Senior Product Manager

Today we have announced Open Text Fax Appliance A10x, a new family of Fax Appliances designed to simplify network fax deployment and use, while providing a cost effective alternative to traditional MFP fax kits and recurring monthly charges with internet fax service providers.

Designed as a simple to deploy, maintain, and use network appliance, the new OpenText Fax Appliance addresses the needs of small businesses and departments with limited IT resources and basic faxing requirements. OpenText is the only vendor offering a complete range of fax solutions including appliances, servers, and fax gateways.

The new Fax Appliance A10x is a true network appliance. The Fax Appliance provides simplified installation and setup and incorporates all the features and capabilities you need in an affordable turnkey fax solution. Users can easily send and receive faxes from the desktop, multi-function products (MFPs), and email.

Integration of Fax Appliance with multi-function products (MFPs) allows organizations to consolidate network faxing services. MFP integration is included in all Fax Appliance models, allowing users to easily fax paper documents using an MFP or network scanner equipped with scan-to-email functionality.

Our goal from the start has been to develop a product for the global market. To that end, we support 14 languages in both user and administrator modes. Even the system audit trail is translated into 14 languages.

Click to read the complete announcement.

For more information, visit the Fax Appliance website at www.fax-appliance.com

To contact sales, please email captaris.sales@opentext.com or call 1-800-304-2727

By Mark Howarth with Axient, an Open Text Partner based in Australia

We recently worked with an Australian-based international law firm, upgrading their enterprise fax environment to reduce IT infrastructure and operating costs by 46% based on previous financial year costs.

Initially, the law firm’s management thought that fax was dead and not widely used within the company. The law firm engaged with our team at Axient to implement a business analysis project to understand volume and usage of fax by line of business. To their surprise, fax was far from dead and remains an integral part of the overall business. Included in our analysis was the cost reduction and efficiency gain from a multi-function printer integration. To meet IT objectives of cost savings and simplicity, Axient implemented a solution that consolidated the existing environment of four physical, aged servers to one RightFax v9.4 Enterprise Suite virtual server, and SR140 Fax over IP with media gateways for PSTN connectivity.

The solution from Axient met the firms goals and provided them with a robust and reliable enterprise fax platform. In addition, the project is generating ROI in less than 6 months.

For more information about Axient, please feel free to contact me at mhowarth[at]axient.com.au or visit our website at http://www.axient.com.au/.

Doreen Eatough, Director, Marketing

Today we have announced that Open Text has achieved Preferred Solutions Developer Partner status with Cisco. This is the highest level of partnership within the Cisco Developer Network. Our commitment to and investment in innovative technology and industry-leading fax and secure document deliver solutions has earned us this honor and I am delighted to share this great news with you.

In conjunction with our elevated partner status, we have also successfully completed interoperability testing and certification of Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition with Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.0X and CISCO Unity Connection 8. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/sw/voicesw/ps556/index.html

Open Text Fax Server has long been a trusted Cisco fax solution, supporting Cisco clients in their Unified Messaging and Unified Communication requirements, including business continuity, virtualization and back-office application integrations.

To further enhance Cisco fax client needs, we are also introducing an Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Branch Office solution for Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) Express. This combined offering addresses the requirements for an organization’s branch offices to operate independently, reduce costs and footprint while at the same time adhering to security and compliance requirements set by headquarters. Watch the video.

For additional information please visit our Website or click on any of the following links.

New Independent Report by Davidson Consulting Names Open Text as the Market Leader in Enterprise Fax Server Shipments in 2009

Waterloo, ON – 2010-07-14 – With significant investments in product development and customer support, Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), the preeminent provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software, is further extending its lead in enterprise fax server software and achieving rapid growth in fax over IP (FoIP) solutions, according to a just-published report from Davidson Consulting, a fax industry analyst firm.

Over the past year, Open Text saw gains across the board in areas most critical to enterprise fax customers including fax server, production fax, multifunction peripherals (MFP) integration and FoIP. Despite challenging economic conditions, the overall fax server market experienced year-over-year growth, with Open Text further solidifying its market leadership.

Read the full press release.

Enterprise Content Management Software to Augment Business Processes and Compliance Initiatives for the Healthcare Market

West Caldwell, NJ, January 6, 2010 — Ricoh Americas Corporation, a leading provider of digital office equipment, today announced that it will resell Open Text’s Document Server, Alchemy Edition[1], to the Ricoh channel through the Ricoh Independent Solutions Vendor Program (RiSVP). Open Text Document Server, Alchemy Edition is a document management software solution that enables organizations to capture, store and manage business critical documents. By combining the flexibility of distributed capture with the security of centralized document management, organizations such as those within healthcare benefit through improved document delivery and compliance support from an end-to-end on premise solution that provides a structured home for documents throughout their entire lifecycle.

“We are excited by the continued expansion of our partnership with Ricoh as it provides great value and benefits to Ricoh’s healthcare customers. Now, with Open Text Document Server, Ricoh customers have access to a high value and cost effective document imaging and archiving solution,” said Matthew Brine, vice president of Fax and Document Distribution solutions at Open Text.

Document Server enables its users to gain increasing value from their Ricoh multifunction product (MFP) investment by harnessing the flexibility of a distributed document capture model in the workplace combined with a centralized, secure and auditable document repository. This solution operates alongside users’ existing work environment, allowing them to work with Document Server using the tools and applications with which they are most familiar. Document Server offers seamless integration with Windows Explorer enabling users to access documents through a simple drive letter. Microsoft Office users can work with documents stored in Document Server without leaving Word, PowerPoint, Excel or any of their other desktop productivity tools. Remote users simply need access to Internet Explorer and power users can take advantage of extended capabilities found in the Document Server desktop clients.

“Together with Open Text, we are committed to providing healthcare customers with best-in-class document management solutions that enhance their core business processes,” said Joyce Ouellette, director, solution marketing, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “With our scalable and robust solutions, healthcare customers will quickly realize productivity gains as well as comply with regulatory requirements within their business environment.”

Ricoh recognized the MFP would become the focal point of all business equipment and blazed a path to provide an open architecture platform to expand the products usefulness. Through our patented “Embedded Software Architecture” (ESA), developers have utilized the most extensive tool offering in the industry to create unique solutions, which have far exceeded customer expectations. Developers enjoy a wide range of individualized support options that have allowed them to reduce development costs by speeding up the development process. Customers have benefited from ESA through productivity increases and the use of existing technology to solve the ever-changing myriad of business challenges. Ricoh’s MFP’s running ESA have evolved from merely printing, scanning and faxing to providing end users with the profound realization they have truly purchased a full service business center.

About Open Text

Open Text, an enterprise software company and leader in enterprise content management, helps organizations manage and gain the true value of their business content. Open Text brings two decades of expertise supporting 50 million users in 114 countries. Working with our customers and partners, we bring together leading Content Experts to help organizations capture and preserve corporate memory, increase brand equity, automate processes, mitigate risk, manage compliance and improve competitiveness. For more information, visit http://faxsolutions.opentext.com or www.opentext.com.

About Ricoh Independent Solutions Vendor Program

One of three Ricoh Alliance programs, RiSVP, developed in cooperation with Ricoh solution partners and Ricoh’s direct and dealer channels, focuses on two key areas: expansion of channel marketing opportunities for RiSVP members and simplifying solution access for Ricoh sales channels. By providing RiSVP member products directly from Ricoh, the direct and dealer channels have more opportunities for new revenue growth combined and simplified sales operations. In turn, RiSVP members enjoy faster and greater financial return on the investments they have made in developing solutions that when combined with Ricoh’s award-winning product portfolio address customers’ key concerns. For more information, visit www.ricohalliances.com.

About Ricoh Americas Corporation

Ricoh Americas Corporation, headquartered in West Caldwell, N.J., is a subsidiary of Ricoh Company Ltd., the 73-year-old leading supplier of office automation equipment and electronics, with fiscal year 2008 sales in excess of $20 billion.

Ricoh Americas Corporation is a leading provider of document solutions. Ricoh’s fully integrated hardware and software products help businesses share information efficiently and effectively by enabling customers to control the input, management and output of documents.

Ricoh Americas Corporation directly or through its network of authorized dealers markets and distributes products in North, Central and South America.

All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies.

[1] Open Text’s acclaimed Enterprise Content Management Solutions, including Document Server, have been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner 2009 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management, based on the company’s ability to execute and its completeness of vision.