Fax is Dead…

We hear this term used a lot and from our experience it is far from dead, we sell Unified messaging solutions that combine Voicemail, email and Fax and we are still continually surprised by the number of users who still opt for the fax option.

With the march of VoIP solutions we see a big problem as VoIP networks were never really designed to carry Fax and so the old basic form of communications struggles on modern networks. For many businesses this is a real issue as certain types of companies will only accept fax communication and not email as a legal document.

We saw a really interesting article over on the FierceVoIP website Fax is Dead…Long Live FoIP! – FierceVoIP. by Marc Robins SIP Forum Managing Director entitles Fax is Dead…Long Live FoIP and in the article he discusses the challenges faced by VoIP networks and what the SIP forum is doing to try and sort this problem out – have a look as it makes interesting reading.

VoIP Destroying the Planet or Saving it ???

We always love the way a business can use a particular hot topic to help promote sales, and right now saving the planet is a real leading news item so a lot of companies have latched onto this to help promote sales.

The part we particularly like is the different angle companies are taking on this depending on their products – lets look at a few different examples on this.

Mitel are promoting their green credentials based on the fact that VoIP and Unified Comms means less travel and more home working and of course less travel is good for reduced carbon emmissions. Mitel states ‘Consider that a roundtrip from New York to Chicago produces 0.35 tons of carbon and flying the U.S. coast to coast accounts for one ton of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases per person. In this regard, teleworking helps spare the environment 3.6 tons of pollutants per teleworker per year.’

OnRelay states that the 25 million IP desktop handsets projected to be purchased in 2008 will consume 1.6 billion Watts of power. They say replacing the majority of those IP desk phones with mobile phones should result in a 74 percent savings in power costs. On Relay also state it is also important to note, that the business transition to mobile phones does not increase the total amount of energy used by mobile phones, because most business people already carry at least one mobile device. Indeed, OnRelay MBX’s ability to separate personal and business in the same mobile device can serve to reduce the number of mobiles carried and charged.

Finally we have Citel who manufacture a legacy desk phone to IP PBX gateway and they say this is a more eco-friendly solution than ripping out old handsets and cabling to install new Cat 5 and more expensive IP phones.

For us here at Iridiacom anything that reduces emissions and waste has got to be a good thing but we leave it for you to decide who is making the best arguements.

Dell Chooses Fonality Open Source

We see that Dell has decided to offer the Fonality software as a bundled option on their servers – this is a real catch for Fonality as there are many other Asterisk based solutions that Dell could have chosen.

This is a bold move by Dell but I guess we should not be surprised as it is just another application that will help them sell servers but for Fonality it will mean they have many more customers that they will be able to cross-sell their other products to. It certainly brings Asterisk solutions more mainstream.

See the report over on TMC NET here

Visit Fonality here and Dell here