Tasked with overseeing digital transformation, enterprise IT professionals are very aware of needing to ensure five-nine uptimes, stability, and increasingly importantly, security. To that end, once a technology is entrenched, it can easily seem inadvisable to replace it.

Unfortunately the obvious benefits of new technology can be left out of overall digitisation strategies as a result. The danger is that digital change management strategies can cover systems and services that are not necessarily at the business’s core. Digital transformation is therefore papering over cracks, not embedding a shift in attitudes.

In Australia, the national broadband network rollout, increasing compliance requirements and global competition are all behind the country’s high uptake of advanced technologies, especially cloud deployments of what were traditionally in-house or on-premise services.

Perhaps the most apparent communications methods that are still very much mired in legacy hardware and software are telephony and the humble fax. IT professionals know that when it comes to specific use-cases, fax is the most reliable, most trusted, and most secure form via which to transmit information.

Phones are, of course, ubiquitous, yet the possibilities offered by cloud voice technologies are often ignored — might that be because IT professionals are chasing higher profile “wins” (or safer options) in their digital transformation efforts? If so, that would be an error, as voice communications are still the foundation of 99 percent of businesses. Here at Tech Wire Asia we look at pivotal communication channels, voice and fax, in the context of digital transformation.

Fax for security, compliance, and now, for high configurability

Legacy fax machines are increasingly challenging to maintain and doing so bears a rising cost. There’s also the cost of the infrastructure required, and the staffing overheads associated with keeping the services running. Internal fax servers have, in the past, been able to take the strain off at least some infrastructure constraints, but in-house services also come with significant disadvantages and costs — especially when compared with cloud-based fax services.

In practical use, too, the type of collaborative working practices that prove so very productive in other areas of enterprise comms are sadly lacking with the legacy stack. Whereas teams are used to pooling thoughts, drafting updates and working together over large distances, that’s simply not possible with in-house fax services.

The answer is to adopt a digital cloud-based faxing service, exemplified by the one offered by J2 Global’s eFax service. The service stands apart in Australia and New Zealand as the company to best help businesses transform their faxing requirements digitally. Enterprise business units and remote facilities can now be 100 percent digital, collaborative, more productive, and more secure with eFax.

Placing significantly safer and still mission-critical fax services in the cloud is a logical step in an overall digital transformation strategy. Often overlooked by IT professionals, faxing’s position will remain for many years to come, yet in many cases, organisations are still loading outmoded on-premise hardware with new toner and paper!

Maintaining security goes alongside compliance with regulations— in fact, proving security systems’ effectiveness is the most substantial part of attaining legislative compliance. Thankfully, the eFax cloud-based offering empowers companies to maintain or achieve necessary compliance with HIPAA, GLBA, SOX, and PCI-DSS, amongst other regulations.

With J2 Global’s eFax service, organisations of every size (none are exempt from governance regulations) not only retain their compliant status, but can be assured that this situation will continue. Furthermore, as new legislation appears anywhere across the globe, J2 and eFax will ensure that the extra burden of keeping up with, and complying with new legislation is taken care of as part of the overall package.

As the total cost of legacy equipment and services continue to grow, not only has fax moved on but so too has that other stalwart of every business’s communications channels— that of voice communications.

Cloud-based voice services

Because most voice services are now fully digital (VOIP being a prime example), it’s an irony that many companies— some of them large enterprises— are still using their phone system as if it were analogue. Whether it’s connecting with clients or using the facility to drive collaboration across the working environment, it takes a specialist provider of cloud voice services to draw out the possibilities modern technology can offer.

In Australia and New Zealand, Fonebox — a part of the worldwide J2 Global group of companies — is helping companies transition their digital infrastructures. The company tailors inbound telecommunications solutions to meet the unique demands of each of its clients.

The logical step for every forward-looking enterprise is to start to deploy their pivotal inbound communications channels as cloud-based services. That leverages cloud’s obvious advantages, like negligible CAPEX and predictable OPEX, but also means that companies can take immediate advantage of new, cloud-based voice services from Fonebox, as and when they are of proven business-oriented practicality.

That effectively removes the risks involved in new technology deployments, and the business can scale without worries or overheads associated with business-critical voice services.

Every IT Manager knows that businesses are subject to change more than ever before, and it takes a similarly agile cloud voice expert to provide the vital infrastructure, capabilities, and security that modern businesses need.

By migrating inbound voice services to a virtualised environment in the cloud, the possibilities open to companies are increased: reporting and analytics, geographically disparate numbers, international and 1800 services, and much more are available. Those join a host of collaborative features that drive business growth, and modern work practises like remote working.

The J2 Global group of companies operates all over the world, but the two featured here are helping ANZ businesses transform, placing vital services around voice and fax at the centre of digital transformation strategies. Learn how your company can benefit from going cloud by getting in touch about new-gen voice services here, and learn the benefits of cloud-based fax technology with a Free Demo