Making the Most of Fax Virtualization

with Boardless Technology

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www.esker.com

esker FaX

Introduction .....................................................................................................................................................................3

Why Businesses Need Fax Virtualization....................................................................................................................4

How Fax Virtualization Works ......................................................................................................................................6

Gaining Fax Virtualization Benefits.............................................................................................................................7

Leveraging Dialogic® Brooktrout® SR140 ...................................................................................................................8

Summary ..........................................................................................................................................................................9

About Dialogic Corporation ........................................................................................................................................10

About Esker ...................................................................................................................................................................11

Table of Contents

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Introductionas more and more organizations automate business processes with solutions like fax servers, the mountains of paper are replaced by a sea of data and an ever-increasing number of machines to handle the data. The resulting explosion of hardware and digital information can create operational nightmares for business managers and iT professionals alike. where do you store all of the data? how do you back it up? how can you achieve green objectives with so many computers that need to be powered and maintained? what happens if a critical server goes down?

Virtualization software products such as VMware, hyper-V and Xen have emerged as powerful tools to answer these challenges by running multiple applications and increasing hardware utilization. at the same time, ip-based fax servers have been gaining predominance over conventional solutions, with sales growing at a rate of over 50 percent according to fax industry analyst Davidson Consulting.

To address the expense and inefficiency of traditional faxing, fax server solutions such as esker Fax leverage boardless fax technology and virtual machine software environments — offering compelling cost and administration time savings by:

§ seamlessly integrating with existing Voice over ip systems

§ streamlining enterprise iT resources

§ Consolidating network infrastructure

§ Increasing hardware flexibility

§ Minimizing your carbon footprint

As a resource to help organizations achieve strategic objectives for efficiency, cost-effectiveness and continuity of faxing operations, this white paper explores the reasons why organizations are embracing fax virtualization as part of their IP strategies — and how they benefit from the technology.

Boosting return on migration to IP

Fax over ip (Foip) lays the foundation for virtualized fax, fundamentally altering the typical distributed technology landscape of fax servers in multiple locations connected to physical trunks (T1, pri, analog, Bri, etc.). Connecting these trunks to gateways that buffer or separate the physical connection from intelligent systems like ip pBXs and fax servers, Foip allows for all of those systems to be centralized — while preserving local phone numbers and low toll costs through the use of gateways in each of a company’s main locations. Moving from a TDM infrastructure to ip offers enormous potential for economies of scale and cost savings.

Virtualization builds on these benefits as a highly effective means of consolidating server systems, delivering failover and business continuity capabilities that result in additional operating cost reductions and efficiencies. Although IP makes it possible to centralize without virtualizing, as some companies do, the result simply is not as powerful or as cost-effective as using ip to centralize and virtualization to consolidate.

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Changing the reality

having one primary application per server has been the dominant reality in most datacenters, driven in many cases by the applications’ need for a specified set of secondary applications. There are many reasons for running one application on one server. Different applications want to run on different operating systems and have different database requirements. Upgrades and patches could affect other applications on the same server. if you run a three-tier application environment, you can end up constantly adding more and more servers, and the situation can get out of control very quickly.

Five drivers of fax virtualization § Hardware is underutilized

§ Datacenters are running out of space for all of the servers acquired over the years

§ Energy costs are skyrocketing

§ Administration costs associated with servers and computers are adding up

§ Disaster recovery is crucial but can be difficult with physical hardware

Hardware utilizationa decade ago, iT staff faced the constant struggle of getting software to run on the hardware that was available at the time. Today’s hardware is so powerful that software typically uses only a small portion of the available processing power. so, many datacenters have machines running at only 10 or 15 percent of total processing capacity. in other words, 85 or 90 percent of the machines’ power is unused.

Most organizations follow the one application, one server guideline — which means an ever-increasing number of machines to keep track of. applications like fax server software may prefer to be installed on a server as the only enterprise application. Different applications may conflict with one another. if you need to take down a machine for an upgrade or patch, all the applications go down. some software prefers to run on Microsoft server editions, while others might want to run on Unix, so you have servers dedicated to one enterprise application.

Datacenter real estatein addition to all of these computers clogging up datacenters, the need for more disk space is taking up room in the datacenter as well. The growth of data can be easily seen in one key statistic: in 2006, the storage industry shipped as much storage (disk drives) in one month as it did in the entire year of 2000. The research firm IDC estimates that total storage shipped will increase 50 percent per year for the next few years. The net effect of all this is that huge numbers of servers have been put into use over the past decade, which is causing a real-estate problem for companies: They are running out of space in their datacenters. and the explosion of data as a result of keeping documents electronic calls for new methods of data storage. Virtualization, by offering the ability to host multiple guest systems on a single physical server, helps organizations to reclaim datacenter territory and avoid the expense of building out more infrastructure.

Pricey poweranother virtualization trend is that companies have assumed that electrical power would continue to be relatively inexpensive and endlessly available. Over the past several years, events like energy company scandals and bankruptcies have changed that mindset dramatically. The increasing march of adding new servers means that every company is using more power as their computing processes expand. The green movement and power scares in recent years have prompted organizations to look for ways to consume less energy and more environmentally responsible. also, energy costs have skyrocketed, making power a more significant part of every company’s budget. In fact, for many companies, electricity now ranks as one of the top five costs in their operating budgets.

Why Businesses Need Fax Virtualization

server server

Circa 1999 Circa 2009

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Server care and feedingserver computers don’t operate on their own. They require maintenance by systems administrators who, as part of the operations group, ensure that each server runs properly. Common systems administration tasks include monitoring hardware status, replacing defective hardware components, installing operating systems and application software, installing Os and application patches, monitoring critical server resources such as memory and disk use, and backing up server data to other storage media for security and redundancy purposes.

as part of strategies to rein in operational costs, virtualization offers the opportunity to reduce overall systems costs by reducing the overall number of machines that need to be taken care of. Overall, virtualization can reduce system administration requirements by 30 to 50 percent per virtualized server, making virtualization an excellent option to address the increasing cost of operations.

How do you recover faxing?if a severe weather event or prolonged power outage takes down your primary datacenter, you may have a set of business applications that are recovered at a third-party datacenter. But how do you handle recovery of the faxing piece? Traditional fax boards require complex back-end infrastructure that is set up either in a subsidiary location or at a third-party provider’s location, which can be expensive and difficult to design and plan for. With an IP-based solution, configurations and parameters can be easily set for flexibility in the recovery environment.

and most importantly from a systems perspective is that the entire machine environment can be virtualized to eliminate many of the recovery steps involved in getting a backup datacenter up and running. Unlike physical hardware that requires special procedures to get data backed up or imaged, with a virtualized environment you can recover faxing systems in minutes.

Production architecture example

ROUTER

FAX SERVER VMWITH DIALOGIC

BROOKTROUT SR140FAX SOFTWARE

FAX SERVER VMWITH DIALOGICBROOKTROUT SR140FAX SOFTWARE

PSTNTelephone traffic

IMAGE BACKUPS

VIRTUAL MACHINEHOSTING FAX SERVER

RECOVERY SITE

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How Fax Virtualization Works

Streamlining resources

Virtualization refers to the concept of coordinating access to a single piece of hardware, like a server computer, so that multiple guest applications (including fax server software) can share the hardware without interfering with each other.

Server virtualization

in more technical terms, virtualization is achieved by inserting a thin layer of software on a given hardware platform or on a host operating system. The software creates a simulated computer environment — the virtual machine — to host a guest operating system that runs as if it were installed on a stand-alone hardware platform.

each virtual machine contains a complete system and a Virtual Machine Monitor, or hypervisor (really just the virtualization software), which will allocate the resources dynamically and with complete transparency to eliminate potential conflict. Therefore, multiple operating systems can run concurrently on a single physical computer and share hardware resources with each other. a virtual machine is fully compatible with all standard x86 operating systems, applications and device drivers.

Storage virtualization

Virtualization can also help with storage of the massive amounts of data generated by enterprise applications as organizations quit paper. storage virtualization can be thought of as the software that runs a saN or storage area Network, which is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices (such as disk arrays and tape libraries) to servers in such a way that the devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. Data is spread out across many hard drives but managed and backed up entirely via storage virtualization software. if a server or hard drive goes down, it does not matter because the working hard drives also have that same data on them.

WITHOUT VIRTUAL MACHINES:Single OS owns all the hardware resources

WITH VIRTUAL MACHINES: Mutiple OS share hardware resources

Application

3Application

2Application

n

OPERATING SYSTEM VIRTUAL MACHINE MONITOR

Physical Host Hardware

Network CPU Keyboard /Mouse

StorageGraphicsProcessors Memory

Physical Host Hardware

Network CPU Keyboard /Mouse

StorageGraphicsProcessors Memory

VIRTUAL MACHINE 1

Application

3Application

2Application

n

Guest Operating System 1

VIRTUAL MACHINE n

Application

3Application

2Application

n

Guest Operating System n

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Gaining Fax Virtualization Benefits

Success factors

Following are some key considerations for organizations moving to a virtualized fax server solution.

§ Traditional fax boards do not support virtualization

§ Make sure your fax server has been tested with virtualization components such as Dialogic® Brooktrout® sr140 Fax software, VMware workstation and VMware esXi

§ Virtualization doesn’t make system administration go away. Virtualization reduces the amount of admin work necessary for hardware, but system administration is still required for guest operating systems. This makes it important for your fax server to provide versatile capabilities for management and reporting.

§ Applications may have multiple machines that need to access the same data. For example, an sap customer master database is accessed by sap applications as well as the fax server software and other business systems.

§ Use a fully capable fax server with comprehensive features for application and infrastructure integration, user productivity, administration, scalability, performance, advanced automation functionality such as image recognition and rules-based data capture for document processing

§ Licensing can get complicated if the fax software vendor charges only per server or per CpU and does not offer options for licensing based on transaction

§ Some PBX providers require an all-IP system as part of upgrades

Positive outcomes

when these factors are taken into account, fax server virtualization offers the potential to improve reaction time, provide a cost-effective means of disaster recovery preparedness and fault tolerance, dramatically reduce network administrative costs, support green business operations and deliver significant cost savings.

With fax virtualization, companies are able to:

§ Lower the cost of fax operations by up to 40%

§ Cut expensive fax boards and maintenance costs

§ Eliminate the extra time needed to replace defective fax boards

§ Reduce training costs and time

§ Reduce installation and testing time

§ Match computing capacity with workloads

§ Consolidate voice and data traffic onto a single IP network

§ Implement a business continuity plan with no additional cost

§ Complete large-scale consolidations in days, rather than months

§ Get new services and applications up and running quickly

§ Lower power and cooling costs

§ Send and receive faxes from any application

§ Reduce the number of servers and datacenter rental costs

§ Increase agility and hardware flexibility

§ Minimize carbon footprint by moving from paper to digital workflows

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Leveraging Dialogic® Brooktrout® SR140

Boardless fax technology

Fax over ip (Foip) eliminates the need for fax boards and enables organizations to take advantage of fax virtualization benefits. The result is a software-only Internet fax server that uses the microprocessors in Internet gateways and routers that corporations already have installed. Foip addresses costs associated with using the public switched telephone network (psTN), including line charges and pBX ports, which is especially important to companies that have eliminated psTN infrastructure as part of Voice over ip (Voip) solutions. Dialogic® Brooktrout® sr140 Fax software provides Foip capabilities for integrating fax servers and fax document management solutions with Voip networks, with the same high level of performance, reliability and scalability as Dialogic Brooktrout fax boards.

Fax over ip with Dialogic Brooktrout sr140 Fax software is transparent to the end user, and organizations can eliminate inter-enterprise psTN charges as fax stays via psTN unless there are fax supporting gateways in the corporate network. Convergence reduces operating expenses and there are no boards to install, maintain, or upgrade. routing long-distance fax traffic over IP reduces phone charges, and organizations realize additional savings by reducing the number of analog and isDN lines as well as support and administration costs.

FoIP benefits

Convergence

§ One network for voice, fax and data

§ eliminate redundant administration costs

§ seamless maintenance — fax server doesn’t touch psTN

Centralized Administration

§ eliminate the need for a fax server in every location

§ Gateways connect remote offices to PSTN

§ proxy servers route between gateways

Consolidation

§ reduce idle fax resources

§ Less personnel, fewer servers, less rack space, etc.

§ savings grow with Voip rollout

T.38 T.30IP

FAX

LANMEDIA GATEWAY

PSTN

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SummaryCompanies today are adopting fax virtualization to gain the benefits of increased efficiency and cost control in hardware utilization, datacenter resources, energy, administration and disaster recovery. Fax virtualization reduces the number of servers an organization runs and manages, lowers capital expenditure and maintenance costs and minimizes energy use. in addition, fax virtualization helps to ensure maximum uptime and disaster recovery preparedness for business continuity, and there is no a need for downtime during hardware maintenance.

esker Fax server solutions can seamlessly be implemented in a virtual machine environment without hardware by integrating fax with Voice over ip networks. Fax over ip with Dialogic® Brooktrout® sr140 Fax software leverages Voip architectures to fax-enable users and applications without requiring any fax boards. Coupled with the boardless Dialogic Brooktrout sr140 technology, esker Fax thrives in the virtualized environment because there are no hardware dependencies and the esker Fax server solution can be enabled on every workstation with no additional costs.

as the popularity of virtual machine software has grown and initial concerns about internet-based fax servers have diminished, esker Fax has supported the Brooktrout sr140 and delivered reliable performance to help organizations make the most of fax virtualization.

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About Dialogic CorporationDialogic Corporation is a leading provider of world-class, innovative technologies based on open standards that enable innovative mobile, video, ip, and TDM solutions for Network service providers and enterprise Communication Networks. Dialogic’s customers and partners rely on its leading-edge, flexible components to rapidly deploy value-added solutions around the world.

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Dialogic and its subsidiaries have over twenty offices worldwide, providing local presence, knowledge and support to serve its customers around the globe. Dialogic’s research and development centers are located in parsippany, New Jersey; Getzville, New York; Needham, Massachusetts; hyannis, Massachusetts; salem, New hampshire; Chicago, illinois; Fordingbridge, england; and renningen, Germany as well as Montreal.

information about Dialogic is available at www.dialogic.com. also, join its social networking community, the Dialogic exchange Network (DeN), at www.dialogic.com/den or visit its Facebook and Twitter pages for additional Dialogic news and updates.

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About Eskeresker is a recognized leader in helping organizations eliminate manual processes, gain process visibility and control, and reduce the use of paper by automating the flow of documents into, within and out of the organization. With its comprehensive software platform and patented technology, esker delivers the advantages of automated document processing either as a powerful on-premise solution or as an on-demand services (saas) leveraging esker-hosted infrastructure to automate every phase and every type of business information exchange. Customers achieve significant and immediate operational efficiencies, cost savings and measurable ROI in as little as three to six months. Founded in 1985, esker operates globally with more than 80,000 customers and millions of licensed users worldwide. esker has global headquarters in Lyon, France and U.s. headquarters in Madison, wisconsin.

Esker solutions

Document Process Automation

with capabilities to capture any inbound documents and deliver documents via any transport channel, esker solutions integrate with enterprise systems to provide a comprehensive platform for end-to-end automation of sales order processing, accounts payable, billing, procurement, cash collection and other business processes. in addition to inbound and outbound fax, capabilities with the esker platform include capture of documents and data from paper mail, email, print and electronic documents such as XML and iDoc, and transport of documents via email, physical mail, print, web, wireless message, archive, copy to file, FTP, SQL, PDF, XML and more.

Fax Server Solutions

esker Fax™ solutions integrate electronic document distribution with mission-critical business applications and provide the convenience of faxing directly from the desktop. as a leading fax automation provider, esker offers proven fax server solutions for:

§ sap applications

§ Business applications

§ Microsoft exchange

§ Lotus Notes

§ Unix/Linux

For more information, visit www.esker.com.

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© 2009 esker s.a. all rights reserved. esker, the esker logo and esker Fax are trademarks or registered trademarks of esker s.a. in the U.s. and other countries. all other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Dialogic is a registered trademark of Dialogic. Other trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners. Dialogic encourages all users of its products to procure all necessary intellectual property licenses

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