Choosing a Fax Solution Deployment Model · Fax as a Service In this pure service deployment model, no fax software, hardware or telephony resides at your site. Faxes are sent and

1 | P a g e

WHITE PAPER | Choosing a Fax Solution Deployment Model

Choosing a Fax Solution Deployment Model

2 | P a g e


Introduction When looking for a fax solution, one of the most important considerations is the method of deployment. There are four basic models for deploying fax solutions: on premise, hosted, hybrid, and fax as a service. Each model has its own unique characteristics – whether those characteristics are strengths or weaknesses will depend upon your requirements for functionality, the availability of IT staff, and how critical fax is to your business.

Let’s consider each of the four models briefly.

On Premise

On-premise fax solutions –fax servers – require light-to-heavy IT management depending on the particular solution and amount of faxing done by the organization. The on-premise model requires purchase and management of servers, software and requisite telephony infrastructure. The key strength of on-premise solutions is the ability to integrate with existing software applications and multi-function printers (MFPs). Advanced on-premise solutions support configurations for high availability – including virtualization and redundancy.

Hosted

Hosted fax solutions move deployment of a dedicated fax server from on-premise to a service provider’s data center. The software is the same, and features like integration remain available. The strength of hosted solutions is that the IT infrastructure is managed at the data centers of the service provider, keeping customer data isolated and protected. The customer is simply responsible for managing configuration, user setup and preferences within the fax software. In order to enable the integrations and facilitate access to the organization, this model typically requires a VPN connection between your network and the dedicated server instance at the service provider’s site.

Hybrid

In hybrid models, some portion of the software resides at your site (on-premise) and some portion is provided as a service (hosted/in the cloud). Where the division occurs can vary from vendor to vendor. The key strength of hybrid solutions is that the service portion includes managing the connection to the telephone network–often the most complex and confusing part of deploying fax solutions–removing this responsibility from your IT staff. Because some of the software is residing on-premise, integration with MFPs and other software applications remains an option.

Fax as a Service

In this pure service deployment model, no fax software, hardware or telephony resides at your site. Faxes are sent and received via email. Outbound faxes are sent to a specially formatted email address that contains the recipient’s fax number, and inbound faxes arrive at the service provider and are routed into

3 | P a g e


the specified recipient’s email box or to an FTP folder in production fax environments. The strength of pure service solutions is that all management of infrastructure is provided by the service provider. Your IT staff can manage users, configurations and fax numbers via a browser-based interface from the service provider. Because no fax software resides at your site, integration with MFPs and other software applications may be limited.

Mapping Deployment Models to OpenText Solutions OpenText, the leading provider of fax solutions worldwide, offers fax solutions for each of the above deployment models. No other vendor offers the range of deployment options and capabilities that OpenText provides. No matter the size of your organization or your volume of fax traffic, we have a solution for you–in your office or in the cloud.

On-premise Solutions

RightFax, the market-leading network fax server solution, automates time-intensive manual,

paper-driven processes by integrating them into your business applications and systems.

Fax Appliance is designed to provide employees of SMBs electronic faxing from the desktop, via

an all-in-one, plug-and-play, hardware-based fax solution.

Hosted Solutions

RightFax OnDemand provides all the features and functionality of RightFax in a hosted

environment. Your dedicated fax server instance runs in our state-of-the-art data centers,

ensuring you retain full ownership and control over your data and where it resides. RightFax

OnDemand leaves your document-related IT, maintenance, and management to the experts at

OpenText.

Hybrid Solutions

RightFax + RightFax Connect is a hybrid fax solution with outsourced telephony for your RightFax

server. This is the perfect option for those organizations that need the enterprise-class

capabilities of RightFax and want to remove the complexity of integrating a telephony network

with their fax server software.

4 | P a g e


Fax as a Service Solutions

EasyLink Fax Services provide you with a cloud-based fax-to-email/email-to-fax service.

Eliminate the cost, complexity, and hardware footprint associated with supporting fax machines,

servers, and enterprise fax infrastructure.

Comparing OpenText Solutions

OpenText RightFax RightFax is OpenText’s flagship on-premise fax solution for large enterprises and mid-sized companies with strong integration requirements and high fax traffic. RightFax is ideal for organizations seeking a long-term, strategic fax solution with resources to support more complex deployments.

OpenText RightFax Connect RightFax Connect is a cloud service that eliminates the need for fax channels and telephone lines for RightFax. It removes the need for IT departments to manage fax telephony in their data center or at various locations where faxing is needed.

OpenText Fax Appliance Fax Appliance is an on-premise, hardware-based fax solution for small to medium-sized businesses. Fax Appliance is ideal for customers seeking a small IT foot print and simple deployment model.

OpenText RightFax OnDemand RightFax OnDemand is a hosted fax solution that offers all the robust features, individual configuration, and integration of RightFax. It is designed for large enterprises and mid-sized companies with strong integration requirements and higher faxing levels. RightFax OnDemand is ideal for organizations seeking a medium to long-term fax solution and wish to avoid managing a formal deployment.

OpenText EasyLink EasyLink Desktop and Production Messaging are software-as-a-service fax solutions for organizations with straightforward faxing needs, seeking a swift and inexpensive deployment. EasyLink solutions are ideal for any size organization with lighter integration requirements.

5 | P a g e


General Characteristics The following chart describes some high-level characteristics of OpenText’s fax solutions. While all of these solutions share multiple advantages over traditional fax machines and multifunction printers (MFPs) with fax boards – each has a unique set of values. When looking for a fax solution, it is important to analyze the value of each characteristic and capability to your organization. Use this chart to see how each solution matches your highest priorities. (See a key for the chart below).

Product RightFax Fax Appliance RightFax

OnDemand EasyLink

Deployment Location On-Premise Hybrid On-Premise Hosted Cloud

KEY CHARACTERISTICS

CapEx Reduction None Good None Best Best

Breadth of Capabilities Best Best Good Best Good

MFP/Software Systems Integration Best Best Good Best Good

Deployment timeline Good Good Better Better Best

Reduction in IT Fax Support Good Better Better Better Best

Vendor Management Solution

NO NO NO YES YES

Hosted Server Backups NO NO NO YES YES

System Up Time Service Level Agreement

NO NO NO YES YES

Transparency of Data Sovereignty/Ownership

Best Best Best Better Good

CapEx reduction – Some solutions are purchased software licenses, and are typically capital expenses

(CapEx); organizations which prefer operating expenses (OpEx) will prefer solutions that reduce CapEx.

Breadth of capabilities – Each of our solutions have different feature sets – organizations with more

complex faxing requirements will likely need a greater breadth of capabilities.

MFP/Software systems integration – Will your organization require integration with MFPs or specific software systems? Some of our offerings provide simple integration with these via SMTP, but others provide deeper integrations with MFPs from specific manufacturers and specific software packages.

Deployment timeline – Some solutions take longer to deploy than others. Cloud solutions tend to take

the least amount of time, but appliances are also fast to deploy because of their all-in-one nature.

Reduction in IT fax support – All of our solutions reduce IT fax support when compared to traditional fax machines and MFPs with fax boards, but some will reduce IT participation even more.

Vendor management solution – Will OpenText manage the fax solution for you? This can be very attractive to organizations with limited or strained IT resources.

Hosted server backups – Some of our solutions include automated backups in the cloud. When solutions are deployed on premise, you are responsible for setup and management of backup systems.

6 | P a g e


System uptime service level agreement – In some deployments, OpenText will provide service level

agreements regarding system up time.

Transparency of data sovereignty/ownership – In some locales, where your data resides is an

important factor. How well can you control the data and its storage location?

Deployment Characteristics Many organizations are beginning to choose IT solutions based on preferred method of deployment. Some organizations want all IT systems to reside in-house or on-premise. Others are beginning to outsource non-critical applications/functions while keeping business-critical systems on premise. And more and more organizations are seeking to outsource all (or as many as possible) IT activities. An increasingly popular alternative is hybrid solutions, in which part of a software system resides on-premise, but some components are outsourced for efficiency.

Product RightFax Fax Appliance RightFax

OnDemand EasyLink

Deployment Location On-Premise Hybrid On-premise Hosted Cloud

Solution Components

Fax Software YES YES NO NO NO

Hardware Appliance (hardware + software)

NO NO YES NO NO

Implementation

Time to Production Weeks to Months

Weeks to Months

Days Weeks Days¹ to Weeks²

Ease of Deployment Complex Moderate/Complex

Moderate Simple Simple

Customization Flexibility High High Limited High Limited 1. If OpenText provides phone numbers

2. If transferring existing numbers from current phone provider

Fax software – Some solutions provide only software that will run on-premise – requiring you provide

server hardware to support it.

Hardware appliance – This deployment option provides both the software and the hardware it runs on. It

also includes fax hardware to allow the use of analog phone lines.

Time to production – The various deployment models will differ in how long it takes to go from vendor selection to live implementation. If you are porting phone numbers, even the fastest deployment models will take 30 – 60 days to have the numbers ported. This isn’t a function of the model, but of the telephone company’s procedures for porting numbers.

Ease of deployment – On-premise solutions are more complex to deploy because you typically will customize the deployment to match your specific needs. Cloud services tend to offer fewer options, but are more likely to be user ready.

Customization flexibility – Some of our fax solutions provide more customizable deployments than

others. It is important to determine early in your selection process how much customization you need.

7 | P a g e


Scalability Characteristics

Product RightFax Fax

Appliance RightFax

OnDemand EasyLink


Scalability

Cost to Scale

Hardware High High High N/A N/A

Software High High N/A N/A N/A

Professional Services High High N/A N/A N/A

Page Volume Very Low High N/A High High

Other

Ability to Manage Unplanned Traffic Spikes

Moderate Best Limited Good Best

Cost to scale – Different deployment models grow in cost differently as you scale the capacity of your fax solution. On-premise solution costs come from adding hardware and software, but the per-page cost grows more slowly than with cloud solutions, which require no additional hardware or software but typically charge per user and/or per fax number and per page of fax.

Cost to scale: hardware – How much will adding hardware cost to help increase the scale of your

implementation?

Cost to scale: software – How much will additional software add to your costs when seeking to increase

the scale of your implementation?

Cost to scale: Professional Services – How much will adding customizations to the implementation add

to the cost of the implementation?

Cost to scale: Page volume – How will increasing the number of fax pages sent each month affect the

cost of your implementation?

Ability to manage unplanned traffic spikes – Solutions that outsource the telephony portion of a fax solution tend to handle unplanned traffic spikes better than on-premise solutions that require you to plan for changes in traffic and capacity yourself.

Telephone infrastructure or telephony management can be one of the most complex portions of a fax solution implementation. Understanding your existing telephony system and maintaining your ability to manage telephony for your fax needs is vital to choosing the right solution.

8 | P a g e


Telephony Characteristics

Product RightFax Fax

Appliance RightFax

OnDemand EasyLink


Telephony For Fax Managed By Customer OpenText Customer OpenText OpenText

Telephony Service Level Agreement

NO YES NO YES YES

Analog Telephony Supported? YES N/A YES N/A N/A

Digital Telephony Supported? YES N/A NO N/A N/A

IP Telephony Supported? YES N/A NO N/A N/A

VPN Supported? YES YES YES YES YES

VPN Required? NO NO NO YES NO

SIP Trunking Supported? YES N/A NO N/A YES

Max Simultaneous Connections 1024 N/A 4 N/A N/A

Telephony Redundancy Optional. Expensive

Included N/A Included Included

Telephony for fax managed by – Who will manage the telephone infrastructure for your fax needs?

Telephony Service Level Agreement – Will your provider provide service level agreements for phone

service?

Analog telephony Supported? – Can you use analog phone lines for faxing?

Digital telephony Supported? – Can you use digital phone lines such as T1 or T3 for faxing?

IP telephony Supported? – Do you have an IP phone switch that the fax solution will need to

interoperate with? Are you seeking to move to VoIP?

VPN supported? – Does the solution support use of a VPN for transmissions that use the internet?

VPN required? – Does the solution require use of a VPN?

SIP Trunking supported? – Does the solution support SIP trunking if I have completely eliminated

phone lines in favor of VoIP via my internet service provider?

Max simultaneous connections – how many maximum simultaneous phone connections can I make

with this solution? Note: outsourcing telephony removes these limitations.

Telephony redundancy – Can I configure the implementation with telephony redundancy in case my

primary provider’s circuit goes down?

9 | P a g e


Security Characteristics Each solution provided by OpenText has a unique set of security characteristics, but all remove many of the risks associated with paper-based faxing such as:

Risk of viewing or removal of incoming faxes by unintended recipients (a violation of law in

some industries and jurisdictions).

Risk that one or more pages of a fax will be picked up with another fax and never get delivered

to the right person.

Risk that the paper fax will be routed to the wrong person.

Risk that time-sensitive faxes will not be delivered to the recipient in a timely manner.

Security RightFax Fax Appliance RF OnDemand EasyLink

Level of security High High High High

Audit of fax transactions/usage High High High High

Third-party audit of vendor infrastructure

N/A N/A YES YES

Data Sovereignty/Ownership High High High Moderate

Level of security – All OpenText fax solutions route faxes directly to intended recipients via secure fax

inbox or corporate mailbox – eliminating the risks listed above.

Audit of fax transactions/usage – Some organizations, industries, and jurisdictions have deeper, more

intensive audit requirements.

Third-party audit of vendor infrastructure – Is your data center SAS70 or SOC2 compliant? Ours are.

Data sovereignty/ ownership – Can you control where your data is located?

10 | P a g e


Features

Capability RightFax Fax Appliance RF OnDemand EasyLink

Desktop faxing YES YES YES YES

Production faxing YES NO YES YES

Secure delivery of non-fax documents YES NO YES NO

Fax archiving YES YES YES YES

SMS YES NO YES NO

Peer-to-peer fax transfer YES NO YES NO

Least-cost routing YES NO N/A N/A

Web access YES YES YES YES

Monitors and alerts YES NO YES YES

Send/receive PDF documents YES YES YES YES

Send Searchable PDF documents YES YES YES YES

Receive Searchable PDF documents YES NO YES YES

Bar code routing YES NO YES YES

XML generation YES YES YES YES

Print-to-fax YES YES YES YES

Compliance filter YES NO YES YES

Desktop faxing – Can you fax from a computer desktop? Can you see your faxing history?

Production faxing – Does the fax solution integrate with production software so that faxes can be

generated by the production software and sent without human intervention?

Secure delivery of non-fax documents – Is there an option for securely delivering sensitive documents

in their original format that includes the ability to verify receipt?

Fax archiving – Is there a method for archiving faxes?

SMS – Would you like to receive SMS notifications that faxes have been received or delivered?

Peer-to-peer fax transfer – Could you save money if you could send faxes directly to a known partner without the use of phone lines?

Least-cost routing – If you have more than one fax server, can you create rules to send a fax via the one with the lowest cost based on location?

Web access – Is there a web interface where I can send and receive faxes – regardless of my location?

Monitors and alerts – Will the system alert me when I have a new fax or when my fax successfully sends?

11 | P a g e


Send/receive PDF documents – Can I convert a PDF to an outbound fax? An inbound fax to a PDF?

Send SEARCHABLE PDF documents – Do I need to create text searchable versions of inbound faxes? Do I need to store/archive faxes with searchable content to quickly find faxes with desktop searches based on keywords, invoice numbers or other strings of text?

Receive SEARCHABLE PDF documents - Can I create a searchable (OCR’d) PDF of a received fax?

Bar code routing – Can I establish bar codes that will tie faxes together and allow me to route inbound

faxes based on the bar code?

XML generation – Can the system generate XML metadata about each fax and pass that information to

other systems?

Print-to-fax – Is there a print driver for faxing that allows me to fax any document I can print?

Compliance filter - Is it possible to scan documents before they are sent to ensure content is in

compliance?

12 | P a g e


Integrations Another key element in choosing a fax solution is determining what software applications and hardware devices you would like to send and receive faxes with. OpenText offers a wide range of pre-built and pre-tested integrations. Integrations to specific MFPs are certified by the MFP manufacturers, as are our SAP and Oracle integrations.

Capability RightFax Fax Appliance RF OnDemand EasyLink

SAP integration YES NO YES YES

ORACLE integration YES NO YES NO

FileNet integration YES NO YES NO

OpenText Content Management Server YES NO YES NO

OpenText eDOCS YES NO YES NO

Microsoft SharePoint Server YES NO YES NO

Microsoft Exchange Server YES NO YES NO

Microsoft Office YES NO YES YES

Cloud Services (Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps, etc.) YES YES YES YES

Lotus Notes YES NO YES NO

Integrations with MFP Devices

Xerox MFP integration YES NO YES NO

HP MFP integration YES NO YES NO

Konica Minolta MFP integration YES NO YES NO

Ricoh MFP integration YES NO YES NO

via SMTP YES YES YES YES

Integration Models

Drop directory YES YES YES YES

API YES YES YES YES

Web Services YES YES YES YES

Command Line Fax Utilities YES YES YES NO

SMTP YES YES YES YES

13 | P a g e


Pricing Models OpenText fax solutions are priced based on deployment model. If your organization prefers OpEX to CapEx, you will benefit most from the hosted and cloud solutions.

COST and PRICING RightFax Fax Appliance

RF OnDemand

EasyLink


Capital Expense

Fax server software YES YES N/A NO NO

Fax server boards or "soft" boards

YES NO N/A NO NO

Fax appliance N/A N/A YES N/A N/A

Hardware/software connectors YES YES NO OpEX NO

Operating Expense

Fixed contract NO YES NO YES NO

Monthly fee NO NO NO YES YES

Per-user charges NO NO NO NO YES

Volume-based charges NO YES NO YES YES

License support and maintenance YES YES/lower YES NO NO

Fax server software – Does the solution require purchase of a software license?

Fax server board or “soft” boards – Does the solution require purchase of hardware fax boards or

software licenses for connecting to your telephone equipment?

Fax appliance – Is the solution an all-in-one appliance that includes both hardware and software?

Hardware/software connectors – Are there optional licensed components that provide integration to

specific hardware (MFPs) or software?

Fixed contract – Is there a fixed price contract for services?

Monthly fee – Does the service contract include any fixed monthly fees?

Per-user charges – Does the service contract include any fixed monthly per-user charges?

Volume-based charges – Does the service charge for fax volume?

License support and maintenance – Does the solution require paying ongoing maintenance fees?

http://faxsolutions.opentext.com or www.easylink.com

NORTH AMERICA +1 800 304 2727 EUROPE +31 (0)23 565 2333 AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST +971 4 390 0281

JAPAN +81-3-5472-5273 CHINA +86 21 28909063 HONG KONG +852 2824 8223 AUSTRALIA + 61 2 9026 3480

Visit online.opentext.com for more information about OpenText solutions. OpenText Corporation is a publicly traded company on both NASDAQ (OTEX) and the TSX (OTC). Copyright © 2012 Open Text Corporation. OpenText and Open Text are trademarks or registered trademarks of Open Text Corporation. This list is not exhaustive. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. 201210300223


Conclusion:

We’ll work with you to find the right deployment solution

OpenText offers a wide range of fax solutions to meet the needs of your organization. This white paper is designed to help you choose the solution that best matches your requirements.

Let us help you choose. OpenText can provide you with expert advice and guidance regarding your solutions. We will take the time to understand your current environment, requirements, and needs. You can also reach out to any one of the extensive network of partners that sell OpenText products to help you choose the right solution.

About OpenText OpenText provides Enterprise Information Management software that enables companies of all sizes and industries to manage, secure and leverage their unstructured business information, either in their data center or in the cloud. Over 50,000 companies already use OpenText solutions to unleash the power of their information. To learn more about OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX; TSX: OTC), please visit www.opentext.com.

As part of the OpenText Information Exchange portfolio, the EasyLink & Fax and Document Distribution Group (FDDG) provides market-leading document exchange, messaging, and notification services for businesses ranging from the smallest offices to the largest enterprises. EasyLink & FDDG can deliver even the largest files quickly, securely, and reliably in the format of your choice. At your office or in the cloud, FDDG has a solution for you. http://faxsolutions.opentext.com or www.easylink.com.

http://www.opentext.com/

http://faxsolutions.opentext.com/

http://www.easylink.com/

Documents

Choosing a Fax Solution Deployment Model · Fax as a Service In this pure service deployment model, no fax software, hardware or telephony resides at your site. Faxes are sent and