The thousands of attendees at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO West 2008 last week in Los Angeles had a chance to check out a wide variety of communications technology products and services in the exhibit hall. That included fax over IP (FoIP) products from FaxCore. The company has been a fixture at the show for several years, and senior vice president Max Schroeder (News - Alert) said attendees continue to give its FoIP solution an “A” grade based on variety of factors including technology, price and simplicity.
The takeaway message from ITEXPO (News - Alert), Schroeder said, is that all FoIP solutions are not created equal. FaxCore 2007 hits the sweet spot of features, price, failover, and technology, he said, and pointed out that this is a new, 21st Century product from a well-established company — the best of both worlds, as it were.
TMCnet: If you had to give one reason why it was important for FaxCore to attend ITEXPO this year, what would it be?
MS: ITEXPO is the best events to reach qualified prospects for both customer premises equipment (CPE) and service provider prospects. In addition, our focus on business continuity, FoIP, converged IP and SaaS (News - Alert) also fits the profile of ITEXPO attendees.
TMCnet:What was the central message FaxCore wanted to convey to ITEXPO attendees, and to whom was this message targeted?
MS: FaxCore 2007 is the only true 21st Century product that meets the needs of the CPE and service provider community. Our unique feature set positions us perfectly to meet the needs of companies of all sizes. FaxCore 2007 also provides the best integration with Microsoft (News - Alert) applications plus imaging companies like Sharp, Xerox, Fuji-Xerox and others.
TMCnet: Can you share one or two particularly noteworthy interactions you had during ITEXPO?
MS: A company with multiple offices that was looking to migrate from their current fax server solution. Their requirements included fault tolerance incorporating a second location and failover to a disaster recovery site. FaxCore provides no-charge courtesy licenses for failover sites, so we got an “ A “ for that requirement. We also provide a distributed server license to cover a second location as part of the basic offering so we also got an “A” for that requirement. Of course, price is always a factor and the prospect gave us an “A” there also.
TMCnet: What surprises, if any, did FaxCore encounter at ITEXPO in terms of customer reactions or comments to products/service and/or session topics?
MS: Not too many surprises since FaxCore has been exhibiting at ITEXPO for several years but if I had to name one, it would be the presumption that “all fax products are created equal.” This, of course, is very far from the truth. Fax server applications have been around for 20 years so it is a mature market. However, many products are a little past their prime. FaxCore was already the technology leader when we started the FaxCore 2007 development process and FaxCore 2007 is an entirely new product not just some extra features added to the previous version. All you have to do is visit www.faxcore.com and spend some time viewing our demo videos and other product information to see why FaxCore 2007 is a true 21st Century product.
TMCnet: Based on interactions with customers, partners, and competitors at ITEXPO, how would you summarize the current market for fax over IP solutions?
MS: The FoIP market is hot and getting hotter. FaxCore entered the FoIP market early on and we can say that FaxCore was the first company to deploy the Dialogic/Brooktrout (News - Alert) SR140 FoIP solution. Many companies are in the transition of moving from legacy voice solution to VoIP. Due to our early entry into this market segment, we have the experience to provide sound advice on the “dos and don’ts” of migration. Plus, a key advantage of FaxCore 2007 is that the product can bridge the gap between legacy systems and the latest technologies so we actually facilitate a smooth migration path.
TMCnet: Who were FaxCore’s competitors at ITEXPO, and how are your company’s products/services differentiated?
MS: The biggest differences are simplicity, price and technology but not necessarily in that order. Each of these are important but some customers rate them in a different order. FaxCore 2007 is simple to understand and very competitively priced because we include so many standard features as part of the basic license. The customer is not forced to choose which features are more important based on budgetary consideration. For example, the following features are extra cost options for many of our competitors and some of these options cost as much or more as our complete solution price:
--Optional PDF formatting on inbound
--Integration with MS Exchange (2003 / 2007 and no connector required on the Exchange Server)
--Native integration with SharePoint
--Web Service / SOA SDK
--Web UI - Internet Explorer 6.x and 7, Safari and Firefox
TMCnet: How would you summarize what FaxCore gained by attending ITEXPO?
MS: The combination of qualified leads, networking with current customers and partners plus the knowledge gained during the conference was tremendous. But, of course, this is why we do ITEXPO West and ITEXPO East every year.
To learn more about FoIP, please visit the Fax Over IP channel on TMCnet.com, brought to you by FaxCore.
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Mae Kowalke is senior editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Mae's articles, please visit her columnist page. She also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Mae Kowalke
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