The other day I signed a very important document without
using a pen and it was done 100% online and you know what? It made me think of fax.
Okay, so I need to get a life.
But the truth is that I conducted an electronic business
transaction that required my signature on a document and go figure - I didn’t
have to print it, sign it and fax it back. The sender used a third-party
software product that gave me the option to “sign” the document online. It even
gave me a choice that allowed me to draw my signature using the mouse on my
computer. If I didn’t choose that
option, it filled in my signature for me using a special cursive-like font. I didn’t like this because it didn’t look
like my signature. So I chose to draw it using a mouse – not an easy thing to
do, but at least I can say I “signed” it myself.
Pretty cool indeed, but what made me think of fax?
The answer is easy. Because when we use fax as a means to
conduct a transaction, we’re satisfied when we see the “wet ink” version of the
signature on the document’s image. Faxes
inherently allow us to validate a signature and we take comfort in knowing that
faxes use secure phone lines; which of course has changed slightly with the
advent of FoIP, but I won’t digress. And
finally the fax server resides securely behind a company firewall. It’s inherently hack proof is what I mean. Nothing
new here as far as being “on message” about the security aspects of a network
fax server.
So I couldn’t help but think about the age old debate about
fax’s demise and the cool killer app that’s supposed to replace it. Here we go again. Is this finally it?
No. I don’t believe so. And by the way nothing I did was entirely new.
Stuff like this has been around for a while now.
Pondering the life cycle of the enterprise class fax server can
give anyone heartburn. The first nail in the coffin was supposed to be email,
then secure email, then digital signatures which took on multiple
personalities, and then electronic signatures, and then online “e-signing” and
then, and then….whew. I’m out of breath.
To me, the biggest litmus test will be the legality of those
e-signatures and its ability to hold up in a court of law. A quick search on the subject yields a lot of
information and in summary: The jury is still out on this one and this article
is not meant to delve into the academics of the E-Sign laws.
Another important proof point is how to make the technology ubiquitous: Deploying such functionality in medium to
large enterprises and making the process easy for 100’s or 1000’s of workers to
manage could pose some challenges. However that’s where I think large,
enterprise class fax server vendors have the advantage. They’re already
managing a company’s documents and their servers handle more than just
fax. Just replace the word “fax” with “documents”
and you get the idea. Another
opportunity will be for those vendors who have workflow abilities too. The act of sending a document for a signature,
receiving it back, validating it and so on is obviously part of a business
workflow process. I see a lot of
potential for an electronic signing process to be part of the future network “document”
server.
Fax vendors and VARs alike should find a lot of opportunity
for bringing this functionality together coherently. It would behoove them to implement the latest e-signature technology into their offerings. The good news is that
most of them do offer some sort of secure file/email sending and as long as
they stay current with the technology, the opportunities for incremental growth in this "never say die" marketplace may be significant.
