By Mark Malone, Fax
Industry Analyst
I was asked to test an interesting new fax product that
should make an impact for fax on the smaller, SMB and even SOHO markets. AudioCodes
asked me to evaluate a new “flavor” of their Fax Analog Telephone Adaptor (ATA)
product. The “new” is really the Fax ATA
and a new product bundle now that the device has abilities for 3rd-party
interconnectivity. I was to do the evaluation product under the auspices of
this new go-to-market strategy, but this was a few months ago and I have heard
nothing from them in a while. Nonetheless, I wanted to share my findings
anyway.
The AudioCodes ATA device is not new and has been selling
well on the market for over two years. You
plug a device into a fax machine or fax-enabled MFP and now the outbound fax
calls can be sent securely over the internet or local network. This is a
tremendous benefit to the, “Residential
and Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) VoIP market” according to
AudioCodes.
The last I checked, its name is the Fax ATA MP-202B HTTPSFAX.
As I learned from AudioCodes, they are also planning on bundling it with 3rd-party
fax providers – both hosted and on-premise as a matter of fact. Or, a customer who already has say, eFax™ can interconnect the ATA device with
their existing service.
What it does:
The device plugs in to your fax machine and uses your local
network or access point to gain internet access via your own firewall,
etc. Now, when placing a fax call, you
or your workers simply do what they always do: Key in the number of the fax and
instead of dialing out the phone line, the call is placed via the ATA device
itself and now travels out in to the “cloud”.
This is a joint effort amongst many players so before I get
in to more of the “how it works”, maybe it’s best to identify the key companies
involved.
Who the players are:
In addition to AudioCodes (www.audiocodes.com) who is the manufacturer
of the ATA devices, there’s Faxback (http://www.faxback.com/Solutions/AudioCodesFaxATA.html
) who designed and developed the interfaces.
Selling the hardware and services bundle is VoIPSupply (www.voipsupply.com).
The “bundle” offering is the AudioCodes Fax ATA, and an account with faxCONNECTit
(www.faxconnectit.com ). They’re the
technology middleware that connects up the fax call from the ATA direct to the
fax services provider – whew. Oh and as
of this writing it only supports eFax’s hosted service so you’ll need an eFax
account (www.efax.com). As I stated, new
connections with other service providers and CPE fax servers are in the works. By
the way, a special thank you goes out go to Marcos Vazquez from eFax Corporate
for giving me a free, temporary eFax Corporate account to use for my
evaluation.
Okay, back to how it
works:
This is a classic “store and forward” concept, based on the
fax telephony T.37 technology: The
premise is you plug one of these into each of your company’s fax machines or
multi-function products (MFPs) and you’re now able to get rid of the associated
phone lines or the need for a special onboard MFP fax card. You connect the Fax ATA device to your
network using its WAN port, and then connect your fax machine or MFP device to
the ATA’s phone port.
Then there’s a registration process and as long as you have
an eFax account – you’re pretty much all set. Now, when you send a fax the way you normally
do, the ATA sends the fax to faxCONNECTit, who then forwards it to eFax. Notifications are sent to your eFax account’s
designated email recipient(s) and faxCONNECTit also provides activity reports
if you so choose to log on to that account.
Figure 1. Conceptual diagram showing the interconnectivity
between the fax ATA and the service provider.
I have more about the evaluation if you would like, just
contact me at Mark@MarkDMalone.com
