XMediusFAX is Cloud-Grade Fax SoftwareTM
We know of no other on-premise, fax software solution that provides the cloud-grade application features
of XMediusFAX. If you do, please tell us about it! Here is how XMediusFAX delivers on seven key cloud
application attributes.
1. Multi-Tenant Architecture
XMediusFAX supports up to 500 tenants per system. A tenant can be a separate company, division within a company, facility within a division or even a department within a facility. XMediusFAX refers to each tenant as a Site. In the system below, XMediusFAX is supporting 46 different departments in 3 different company divisions in 10 cities across the US. Remember this system can support an additional 454 Sites (tenants).
Each Site can be configured independently and each Site operates autonomously from every other Site.
2. Peak Load Capacity Processing
Companies can provision the number of Outbound Fax lines and Inbound fax lines that a Site can use at one time. In the example below, the Chicago Accounting department of the Service Division can use 6 lines for Outbound and 4 lines for Inbound faxing.
More importantly, to accomodate spikes in fax volumes, companies can also provision additional lines to a Site which XMediusFAX dynamically provides based upon a weighted average assigned to the Site. By assigning 8 additional, on-demand lines, the Chicago Accounting department could use a maximum of 14 Outbound Fax lines at one time (6+8), 12 Inbound Fax lines at one time (4+8), or 18 Total Fax lines (6+4+8) at one time.
With a priority weight of 900, XMediusFAX will assign additional fax lines as needed to the Chicago Accounting department before it would assign additional available lines to Sites with a lower weighted priority.
3. Redundant Anywhere Fax Processing
Faxing applications rely on individual components to process faxes. XMediusFAX uses SMTP and XML Gateways to submit files for outbound faxing. Rasterizers convert the attached files into faxable TIF images. Fax Drivers manage the telephony communication with your VoIP Gateway. SMTP and XML Gateways also handle fax distribution and fax transmission notifications when a fax is successfully sent or received.
XMediusFAX provides three cloud application advantages that allow companies to process faxes virtually anywhere in their corporate infrastructure to support their WAN utilization and optimization initiatives.1. These four fax processing components can be installed on servers anywhere in
your corporate infrastructure. For example let's say your centralized XMediusFAX
system is located in Denver.
- You can install Fax Drivers on servers in your data centers across the country which also house your VoIP systems. Instead of being forced to communicate via T.38 across your WAN to your VoIP systems, XMediusFAX can communicate via TCP/IP to its Fax Drivers which then communicate via T.38 with the local VoIP system.
- If you did a significant amount of outbound faxing from your ERP system in your Chicago data center, you could install an XMediusFAX Rasterizer on a server in the data center. So instead of transmitting a large PCL file across your WAN from Chicago to Denver for every fax, the local Rasterizer would convert the PCL file to a significantly smaller TIF file for transmission from Chicago to Denver.
2. These four fax processing components can be dedicated to processing faxes
from specific Sites (tenants) or applications. A hospital could dedicate components to
only process faxes from its EHR (electronic health record) application. Or a service
company to only process faxes from its ERP or accounting application. In the example
below, an XMediusFAX Rasterizer is dedicated to only processing faxes from 6
departments in the Houston office of the Distribution Division.
3. Companies can install an unlimited number of these four XMediusFAX
components. This provides two unique advantages:
- Companies can more effectively manage enterprise-wide deployments by segregating
the components which process faxes by company, division, geography, etc.
Even running a single XMediusFAX server, companies can install multiple instances of these components to provide redundancy for faxing deemed mission-critical.
Virtually every other fax server software product requires you to install their fax processing components on the server running the software, or does not support installing unlimited instances of these components or does not provide the ability to segregate mission-critical faxing from general faxing by providing the ability to limit the components to supporting specific applications or departments.
4. Decentralized Configuration with Centralized Support
Companies that consolidate stand-alone fax server applications into Cloud-Grade Fax Software like XMediusFAX typically do so in defined, incremental steps. This process requires a changing
mix of Infrastructure, Telecom and Server Engineers, Business/System Analysts, Power Users within departments and Help Desk personnel. The flexibility of the XMediusFAX Administrator architecture allows appropriate access to all of these team members as their level of involvement changes throughout the project.
In one deployment model, Business/System Analysts in a facility may drive the discovery process for their various departments and then handle the initial XMediusFAX configuration to meet the departments faxing needs. Once the system goes live, on-going, end-user support might be turned over to a centralized Help Desk. The screenshot below depicts how Administrator access for System Analysts and Help Desk personnel could be configured to support this model.
Access by centralized personnel can be further restricted by conditions such as line-of-business, application or geography. So Help Desk personnel for the Distribution Division would only have access to the Distribution Division Sites. Or members of the Western Region Help Desk would have access to the Seattle and Salt Lake City Sites, but not the Sites found in the Midwest or East regions.
5. Scalability
XMediusFAX supports up to 240 lines of faxing in a virtual server and 480 lines of faxing in a physical server. Using an average of 50 seconds to send or receive a page of fax, XMediusFAX provides significant scalability.
- One virtual XMediusFAX server licensed for 240 fax lines will process approximately 17,280 pages of fax per hour and 414,720 pages in 24 hours
A physical XMediusFAX server licensed for 480 lines doubles this capacity to 34,560 pages per hour and 829,440 pages in 24 hours
6. Open Source & Open Standards
Years ago, Sagemcom had the vision to recognize the role open source software would play in today's IT infrastructure and the courage to use open source in XMediusFAX even though all of the other major fax software vendors chose proprietary standards. As a result, XMediusFAX utilizes four open source applications - Apache Tomcat, Java, MySQL and Python. In addition, it supports four open standards in its software architecture - CORBA, SMTP, Web Services and XML.
7. Utilization
Increased utilization of hardware and software resources yield cost savings and greater operating efficiencies. Companies discover this when they consolidate their manual fax machines and other fax software applications and deploy XMediusFAX. Although it varies greatly depending upon the nature of your faxing, most companies experience reductions in the number of fax lines they need with XMediusFAX ranging from a 4 to 1 reduction up to a 10 to 1 reduction. So if your company has 100 fax lines, you should effectively handle the same volume of faxing with an XMediusFAX system licensed for 10 to 25 lines. Key considerations for the actual number of lines you will need are driven by factors such as the percentage of inbound vs. outbound faxing your company does, the time sensitivity of sending outbound faxes, the average length of a fax you send or receive and whether there are regular spikes in your company's fax volume.
