SPECIAL FOCUS - Integr8 Group

Integr8 FAX
Sticking
to the
fax
Integr8 FAX’s
FaxM8 service
throws the
humble fax
a life-line by
offering a
corporategrade,
free faxto-e-mail
service
with zero
installation,
subscription,
training and
support cost.
WORDS Carel Alberts
Fax-to-e-mail (and back again) allows for the
sending and receiving of faxes as e-mail attachments.
This technology has become an increasingly popular
office communications method, for obvious reasons.
For starters, it integrates an old-school
communications channel (fax) into a futureproof
one (e-mail), giving it a new lease on life
and broadening the accessibility of business
communication. In a country undergoing
wholesale upliftment of previously disadvantaged
businesses, your trading partners may well rely on
the humble fax; lowering the barriers for them to
deal with you can only benefit your transformation
score and enrich your trading ecosystem.
It is also hugely convenient and cost-effective. With
internet everywhere you care to look these days – at
work, at home and on the run almost anywhere in
the world – e-mail follows you wherever you are,
on your Blackberry, smartphone or laptop. Lastly,
you contribute to another very important cause.
While fax-to-e-mail doesn’t herald the dawn of the
paperless office just yet, it is one answer to the call
for green IT, which is getting louder every day.
It makes sense, then, that the Integr8 Group
incorporated a company dealing exclusively with this
technology into its portfolio of IT-associated businesses.
Integr8 Fax ensures that its, and the Integr8 Group’s,
clients have access to the best possible solutions.
Cost benefit
Integr8 Fax’s FaxM8 service is one of these
vitally important “green” facilities, launched in
May 2007 in a bid to improve the efficiency
of office communications. CEO Walter Bredell
says the service is free to use when receiving
faxes, but attracts a fee when sending.
“Receiving FaxM8 faxes as e-mail attachments
doesn’t cost a cent – no setup, no monthly
subscription, no installation cost, and no training or
support costs. FaxM8 is freely available to anyone
with an e-mail address, by application to support@
integr8fax.com. It will remain free, and there is no
limit to the number and size of faxes received.”
Walter Bredell, CEO, Integr8 Fax
The service is licensed with Telkom, which offers
Integr8 FAX a rebate on calls placed to 086 numbers.
Bredell says this revenue is enough to allow the
company to offer free receipt of faxes, while still
offering a corporate-grade service. Rates for sending
faxes are lower than normal fax-sending rates.
Fax as a service
With much experience in offering IT as a service
through its Nerve Centre, an intelligent data centre
and communications backbone, Integr8 Fax servers
are hosted in a highly scaled, secure and powerprotected
environment, offering a fast, reliable
and secure service. Faxes sent to a 086 number
pass through the fax server, are converted to an
image file (TIFF) or non-editable .pdf, and routed
to the e-mail client of the 086 number holder.
Faxes are sent from e-mail in the same way in
reverse – as an e-mail attachment in a number
of popular formats, converted by an off-site
fax server, and routed to any fax number, 086-
prefixed or otherwise. Bredell says conversion
from attachment to fax, and back to attachment, is
done up to 70 percent faster than the ponderous
fax-receiving or -sending process of old. The 086
number can be faxed from anywhere in the world,
by simply prefixing the (0)86 number with 27.
There’s a kind of touching justice in allowing an
old technology a re-entry into a brave new world.
As it is, Africa cannot afford to chuck out too much
of the old while getting on with the new. So for the
sake of business efficiency and support of a social
and green cause, it makes sense to join the new fax
revolution: No more klunky, on-premise hardware,
no more get up and wait, no more away-from-myfax
delays, and a whole new vista of trade partners. B
12