The Instant Message: Quarter 4 Edition
November 23rd, 2009Moving to Voice over IP? Now is a Great Time to Migrate Your Fax Environment
Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, Version 9.4 Service Release
Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, Version 9.0 End of Life
Index Engines – Your Backup Tape and Network Search Engine
Independent Research Under Fire
The Instant Message—Letter from the President
As we near the end of 2009, I can’t help but reflect back on what a year it has been. Not only has the economy impacted the way companies do business, but it has forced organizations to re-evaluate how they manage their operations on both a micro and macro level.
On a micro level, I know of organizations that have made changes as minor as reducing the temperature of the office by a few degrees and cutting back employee perks such as complimentary soda. While these changes seem miniscule alone, collectively they add up to great savings over the course of the year.
But, the real impact to the bottom line comes from significantly streamlining the organization’s operating infrastructure. One such change is Fax over IP (FoIP).
If your organization is migrating to Voice over IP, now is the time to make the same migration of your fax infrastructure. Migrating to FoIP has numerous benefits to your organization. FoIP allows organizations to consolidate their fax servers, reducing the number of servers and hardware which must be maintained, simplifying network management, and decreasing energy consumption.
And the trend is gaining momentum. According to Open Text, makers of the leading fax server, Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, sales of Fax over IP grew 123% during the company’s 2009 fiscal year.
As one of the nation’s leading value added solutions providers of Open Text Fax Server, IIS is in the unique position to help your organization make the migration to FoIP and optimize your fax environment. But more importantly, we recognize that your fax data is no longer a departmental application, but an integral part of your organization’s communications infrastructure.
In 2010, we are focused on delivering innovative solutions that not only help you manage your fax traffic more efficiently, but help you more intelligently leverage the content contained on those documents. We are excited for what the future holds, and look forward to working with our customers to help you extend your investments and improve your bottom line.
Until then, all of us at Instant InfoSystems wish you and your families a very happy holiday season.
Moving to Voice over IP? Now is a Great Time to Migrate Your Fax Environment
Companies are increasingly migrating their telephony infrastructure to VoIP in order to reap the benefits of a virtualized environment. Did you know the same benefits of virtualizing your voice environment can be extended to your fax environment? Take advantage of a special offer from Dialogic and receive a $100 per channel rebate when moving to FoIP before December 31, 2009. For example, if you have a 24 channel system and migrate to FoIP you receive a rebate for $2,400. For more information about the rebate program contact IIS at info@instantinfo.com or (310) 750-7200.
Here are some key reasons to virtualize your enterprise fax environment and move to FoIP:
FoIP offers interoperability between SR140 and Cisco, Avaya, Nortel and many other products. Please see the full list by following this link http://www.dialogic.com/interoperability/fax.htm.
Convergence of voice and data networks into a single IP network
• Offers a simplified network management and maintenance
• Elimination of “stand-alone” analog lines
Transitioning your entire environment to a single IP network will save you money
• No more analog lines
• Lower maintenance costs
• Save money by consolidating multiple servers
Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, Version 9.4 Service Release
The anticipated release of Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, Version 9.4 in August delivered a number of key benefits for RightFax users including reducing costs, increasing compliance, improving document processing and enhancing integrations. Some of the key feature enhancements include:
Support for Fax over IP and Virtualization
• Reduce Costs
• Consolidate Servers
Stability with BrookTrout Boards
• Improved compatibility with fax boards
New reporting tool, Enterprise Fax Reporter
• Enhanced reporting and auditing
Updated server and system support
• Supports 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server 2008
Improved client and email options
• Outlook integration
Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, Version 9.0 End of Life
If you are currently running Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, version 9.0, now is the time to upgrade. Open Text announced the end of life for Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, v9.0 on October 1, 2009 and will no longer support the product. Instant InfoSystems still provides support for all versions of Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, including v9.0, but cannot escalate support issues to Open Text for product version which have been discontinued. The migration from Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, v9.0 to v9.4 varies depending on your environment. For a free consultation with a product specialist to discuss upgrades from Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, v9.0 or any previous version, please contact Instant InfoSystems at info@instantinfo.com or (310) 750-7200.
Index Engines – Your Backup Tape and Network Search Engine
Instant InfoSystems has partnered with Index Engines to provide solutions to help enterprises access and restore data stored on local area networks and backup tapes. Index Engines’ patent-pending software assists enterprises with the search and extraction of data quickly and easily without requiring the original backup software. Index Engines offers alternatives by offering its Tape Engine and LAN Indexing software. Index Engine’s Tape Engine eliminates the burden of full tape restore while LAN Indexing indexes your network at speeds up to 1 TB per hour.
To learn more about the IIS and Index Engines partnership go here or download our white papers for the Tape Engine and LAN Indexing.
Independent Research Under Fire
Organizations are looking at email archiving solutions to address their eDiscovery, storage and compliance needs at an increasing rate. However, with a growing number of products on the market today, finding the right solution for your organization can be a challenging and time consuming task.
As such, many organizations turn to 3rd party analyses of these products, conducted by independent research firms. While these analyst reports provide a comprehensive overview of the products’ features and capabilities, many of these reports fail to put this research into a context which allows companies to assess which solution is the best match for the unique needs and requirements for their organization. Even more dangerous is the “stack ranking” that these reports provide—that is, many of these reports rank products from “best” to “worst” based solely on a feature list, and seldom are these features actually tested and validated in a production environment.
Recently, this issue was brought to the forefront by ZL Technologies, a leading manufacturer of Email Archiving solutions. ZL Technologies has filed suit against Gartner Group Inc. and the primary analyst responsible for the email archiving research report. In this suit, ZL Technologies states that the research report, specifically the “Email Archiving Magic Quadrant” is misrepresentative because the research conducted did “not involve [a] single minute of independent testing of the products that Gartner purports to evaluate.”
As experts in Email Archiving, Instant InfoSystems recognizes that not all products are the right fit for all organizations. Some products may be better suited to a specific environment than another, but that a simple “stack ranking” of products does a disservice to the organization looking for a solution to meet their unique requirements.
With the IIS Email Archiving Scorecard, version 2.0, IIS invested over 900 man hours testing and evaluating 240 features and performance metrics in a production environment. This comprehensive, objective report does not provide a “stack ranking” of products, but rather provides an in-depth review of each products’ strengths and weaknesses, with recommendations on which product is best suited to a specific environment. This research report is designed to assist organizations in purchasing the email archiving solution that is right for the companies’ specific requirements—providing consultative guidance and saving companies time and money in their evaluation. To learn more about the IIS Email Archiving Scorecard, go here.
Juan’s Tech Tip
Juan Cueva, Director of Technical Services, has been working with Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition for over 12 years and is the manager of a world class team comprised of Technical Support Engineers and Subject Matter Experts. Juan’s Tech Tip analyzes technical issues and offers solutions to those problems. To learn more about Juan and the IIS Technical Support team go here.
A problem that our Technical Support Engineers hear frequently deals with upgrading a RightFax client from 8.x or 9.3 to RightFax Version 9.4. The error message many customers are receiving reads: “Cannot directly upgrade versions of RightFax prior to 9.0. See the Installation Guide for information about migrating from older versions. This application cannot continue and must be closed.”
This error means that the version of the RightFax client detected is not eligible for a direct upgrade to Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, v9.4.
There are a couple solutions to fix this problem. The only versions that are eligible for direct upgrades are:
1. RightFax 9.0 Feature Pack 2 with any hotfix version.
2. RightFax 9.3 Feature Pack 2 Service Release 5 or later.
If you are receiving the above error message, you will need to either update your existing client to one of the listed versions, or uninstall the existing client and then install the new Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, v9.4 client.
The last Tech Tip for the quarter deals with the recent release of Windows 7. Windows 7 is currently not supported with Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, v9.4. When we receive more information about the compatibility between Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition, v9.4 and Windows 7 we will pass that information along.