Today’s business communications environments are certainly not what they were even a year ago, let alone a decade ago. The continued development of enhanced solutions and products are creating advance IP-based communications solutions that enable features like single-number access, mobility, collaboration, and much more. And they all are driving productivity to new levels.

 

However, despite the achievements of communications developers, sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and one of the older communications technologies remains a key to many businesses today — the fax.

 

Indeed, despite being overlooked by many solutions vendors and service providers, the fax remains not only a viable communications medium, but a critical one for many businesses. But today, businesses no longer need those old bulky fax machines that are collecting dust in many an IT closet. Instead, they have the option to integrate fax into their converged communications networks, easily connecting them to internal and external networks using SIP technology.

 

Financial institutions, real estate agencies, governments, and legal firms are just a few of the businesses still relying heavily on faxing to transfer thousands of documents daily, into and from business-critical document management and ERP systems, not to mention those that simply require a hard copy of a signature in order to move business forward.

 

The truth is, however, that many service providers and enterprises have only recently recognized the challenges associated with reliably delivering fax over IP.

 

To understand how enterprises and service providers can leverage their investments in SIP to successfully integrate fax into SIP and T.38 environments, thereby improving business processes, AudioCodes today presented the fifth in its ongoing series of “Breaking Free” Webinars in conjunction with TMC.

 

AudioCodes’ (News - Alert) director of product development Alan Percy spent more than an hour discussing how to best use T.38 and SIP standards to integrate fax servers into today’s IP-based networks.

 

He discussed reliability concerns with the G.711 standard, and more specifically, how SIP and T.38 can improve fax reliability, as well as how to eliminate expensive dedicated fax boards from communications system, all the while creating a more versatile platform, including how legacy TDM faxes can be connected to SIP trunking carriers.

 

In addition, Alan provided a peek into the future of the fax, ultimately concluding that the fax isn’t going anywhere. At the end of the event, which concluded with a long series of listener questions, the audience left with a solid understanding of how SIP and T.38 can be leveraged to create reliable and scalable fax solutions for their businesses.

 

If you missed the event, don’t miss the opportunity to listen to the archived version and join more than 400 of your peers who registered for the event.

 

In addition, be sure to visit www.audiocodes.com/breakfree to check out the archived versions of the first four Webinar to learn how SIP applications can help enhance the many facets of your communications environment.

 

The initial Webinar, “Break Free — Leveraging SIP in Developing Enhanced Applications,” discussed the benefits of open, SIP-based applications and how they can help avoid many of the issues involved with adapting proprietary models to constantly evolving IP-based communications technologies.

 

“Building Applications with SIP — the IP Contact Center, specifically focused on understanding the value of SIP in contact center deployments, and how it can be leveraged as an enabling technology to deliver scalable and cost effective solutions for next generation contact centers.

 

The third event, “Building Applications with SIP — Conferencing & Collaboration Solutions,” discussed SIP-based conferencing applications, and how they can not only help you reliably connect your colleagues, customers, and partners, and allow them to collaborate from a distance to enhance their communications environment, but how they can save you money in the process.

 

The fourth Webinar, “Call Recording — Evolving from TDM to VoIP by Transitioning Challenges into Opportunities” took a look at call recording and call logging, for which today’s next-generation communications environments present a tremendous opportunity to further develop these tools, including the ability to integrate them into other components of your communications platform.

 

And, for more on SIP, be sure to check out Alan Percy’s SIP Invite Blog on TMCnet.

 

Finally, when you head to Miami, Florida next week for INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, but sure to visit AudioCodes at booth #823, as well as a keynote address on Thursday by AudioCodes’ vice president of marketing for Enterprise Enhanced Service Sharone Ben-Levi.