Microsoft and Venali deliver electronic faxes in a whole new way

While I’m still on the fence about Outlook 2003’s new interface, I am impressed with a few of its bells and whistles. One you might not see unless you dig a little deeper is its built-in FoIP (Fax over IP) capability. FoIP has been around for quite some time, and Microsoft has made the smart move of allying itself with a leader in the field, Venali.

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You can activate the IP fax provider configuration wizard from any Office application by clicking on the Send To menu option, then quickly click over to a Web page and choose between eFax and Venali. Most of us have tried eFax in the past, and for me, the experience simply wasn’t good enough to make hosted FoIP a permanent part of my life.

But last week, I happened to be in our testing lab with Ralph Musgrove, Venali’s outspoken vice president of market development, and he decided to convince me that Venali is an electronic fax of a different color. After using it for a week like a kid with a new toy, I have to agree.

Unlike consumer-centric eFax, Venali began as an enterprise-oriented electronic fax solution aimed squarely at the Fortune 1000. According to a host of easily verified stats Musgrove has, sales were good because of the shortcomings of other FoIP solutions. The main shortcoming: internal solutions, complete with fax servers and modems, generally don't do much better than 81 percent uptime. I’ve managed enough of these in the field to generally agree, though I’ve never measured it. Worse, there are often client interfaces that need to be installed, creating even more bother.

Venali is its own fax carrier. The company maintains all its own POPs and houses them in ultra-secure and super-redundant data centers, enabling the company to issue an independently verified 99.99 percent uptime statistic. That’s selling point Number 1. Selling point Number 2 is even better: What do you need to install? Nothing. As long as your PCs are Internet-enabled, you’re also Venali enabled. No server hardware, client software, nada.

And now that Venali has integrated with Office 2003, you don’t even need to activate each user separately. Sign a corporate agreement with Venali, activate the Venali fax option in your desktop images, and push the whole thing out to users. You’re done. Users can then modify their personal settings using account logins on Venali’s site. Final selling point: Consumer pricing for Venali costs about $9.95 per month. Corporate plans start there and go down. You’re faxing better, faster, and most importantly, cheaper.

And then there are the technical advantages. Tablet XP users, for example, can receive, say, a contract via fax, open it from their Outlook inbox, automatically spawn Microsoft’s internal image viewer, and then sign the contract right on the screen. Save the image and fax it back the same way it came.

FoIP is also more secure than standard faxing. First, you’re automatically issued a secure ID token from Venali when every user activates. Further, Venali encrypts its fax data, both inbound and outbound, with 3DES encryption. It’s also the only FoIP company to offer an in-house anti-junk fax feature called Fax Protector. Venali built its fax spam database by offering Amazon gift certificates to 2,000 volunteers for every 80 spam faxes they received and forwarded on to Venali for a two-year period. This has evolved into a highly accurate anti-spam fax capability that automatically routes junk faxes to your Outlook 2003’s junk e-mail folder.

And if you’re worried about sending paper-based document, just hook up a TWAIN-compliant scanner. These can be attached to users’ machines or shared on the network, and Venali has a host of scanners it recommends. As long as the scanner supports TWAIN, it’ll support Microsoft’s Office suite, and that means it supports Venali.

I’ve managed enough electronic fax servers, fax applications, and fax appliances to know a good thing when I see it. Better, faster and best of all, cheaper; you won't find a bigger no-brainer. FoIP is here to stay, and Venali’s future looks darn rosy.