Regulations drive fax-to-e-mail

By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist

Johannesburg, 13 Aug 2009

The fax-to-e-mail market is growing following tougher financial regulations, according to Craig Freer, MD of Vox Amvia, a subsidiary of Vox Telecom.

In order to capture the local fax-to-e-mail market, Vox Amvia has developed Xtenda for RightFax customers, a solution that allows companies to roll out free fax to all desktops, while still meeting regulatory requirements.

“New regulations are placing strict requirements on companies to protect the integrity and confidentiality of customer information. Any corporate utilising fax to e-mail today is at risk of information loss, as information is sitting on unsecured third-party servers,” says Freer.

“Regulations such as the SA National Credit Act, Basel II and the upcoming King III are geared towards protecting and guaranteeing the privacy of information. In the total information protection environment, privacy laws are breached when companies put their customers' confidential information on the data centres of a third-party vendor which can be used for fraud.”

According to Freer, the Xtenda solution is built on a company's existing infrastructure, there's no number change or requirement for additional bandwidth, and there's reduced cost of outbound fax.

The solution provides businesses with up to 15 000 dedicated personal fax lines on a single Telkom primary rate interface (PRI) line. Telkom typically offers 300 per line.

Freer claims the technology ensures corporate compliance and governance because it traces documents. The solution is being rolled out across the City of Cape Town, which is made up of 12 500 employees. Freer adds that Vox Amvia is in discussions with one of its global partners to release the product internationally.

According to research conducted by Vox Amvia, there are currently 1 604 160 fax users in SA, and the company expects this to double to 2 771 988 in 2012.