The future of FoIP is very bright

However over the years, not only has FoIP as service resisted the market forces including the threat of email, it is growing strongly and has been able to carve out niche for itself in the niche markets.

“Adoption of email as a service in the corporate environment will never result in the death of FoIP", says Max Schroeder vice president, of Faxcore.

In an interaction with Idhries Ahmad of CIOL, Max, talks how FoIP has been able withstand the challenge or email and the market segment where FoIP continues to grow.

CIOL: 1999, 2000, FoIP was extremely hot application, but it didn’t sustain the initial hype and didn’t grow as it was expected. What in your view were the reasons responsible for that?

Although FoIP was a hot topic in 1999, it was too early for FoIP to be widely deployed.   First, there were very few products available but the key issue was VoIP.  Many countries in the world such as India, restricted IP traffic including VoIP and FoIP.   A third factor is that FoIP on its own does not provide enough significant advantages over legacy fax to present a compelling argument.   

For enterprises to be interested in FoIP, they must also be interested in VoIP and converged communications.  In 1999, VoIP was not widely deployed but by 2005, VoIP was outselling legacy PSTN products in many world markets.  Now, FoIP is perceived as one of the key components of a converged solution that also includes voice and data.  Also, products like FaxCore that have an architecture that plays well in a global environment are definitely driving the adoption of FoIP.  

Idhries, our earlier voice conversation and later emails including this reply, only serve to demonstrate the globalization of today’s business environment.  We are over 8,000 miles or 13,000 kilometers apart and separated by 10.5 hours yet we are discussing matters that are critical to both of our respective home countries.

CIOL: Do you feel that the massive adoption of email as a service in the corporate environment will result in the death of FoIP applications?

I have been answering this question since 1990 and the answer remains the same – NO.   Technically the two are very different.  Email is text-based and fax is image-based  This is critical both to the types of use and the practicability of each in its own environment.  The legal issues are also very critical.  

Email is generally not considered a legal document except is very well defined and very limited areas.  Fax has been accepted as a legal document in most countries around the world for quite some time.  

Therefore, industries like banking, insurance, medical, mortgage and loan, securities trading, law firms, pharmaceutical and many government applications all require a fax communication based on its definition as a legal document.  After 16 years of answering this question and 150 years since the first commercial fax was sent, fax is still alive and well.  

CIOL: Does it make sense for vendors to come with dual ports (Both Voice and Data) when demand for data application is not that strong?

The trend is moving toward full converged solutions and the popularity of SIP is one of the driving factors since it make integration very easy.  Also, products like FaxCore with a SQL, .net, and web architecture combined with a built-in no-charge SDK are driving the convergence with data.  

For example, fax documents such as loan application or medical forms can be sent out incorporating a bar code that will route the completed document to a specific location in the SQL database application, thus increasing productivity and improving security and customer or patient confidentially at the same time.

CIOL: How do you see the future for FoIP applications? I mean what are the niche applications that the FoIP applications can target. Can you outline these applications where FoIP will make it big?

The key to all IP markets is increased productivity, lower cost, and convergence with mission critical applications.  As I stated above, convergence is the critical driving factor and combines with the lower cost of global communications using IP to open this market.  

Since the deployment of products supporting FoIP is still in its early stages the deployment of FoIP will follow the original path of fax.  Industries that are paper intensive such as banking, insurance and medical will lead the way as they have the most to gain.  The original deployment of fax machines in the 1970’s and 1980’s followed this path.