Does Fax Have a Future?
Does fax technology have a future? The knee-jerk response to this question is obviously “no.”
Most people would probably say fax doesn’t even have a present. But I had lunch this week with a couple of guys who claim that fax technology does have a future—and that they’re driving it into the cloud.
No, seriously.
According to Kyle Flowers and Greg Smith from J2 Global Communications—which just happens to own the eFax online faxing service—the future of old-school faxing is in buzzword-of-the-month cloud computing.
Sure, it sounds silly at first, but here’s how they lay it out:
Despite the widespread perception that it’s a hopelessly outmoded technology, Flowers points out that “faxing remains a very necessary part of most small businesses.” The vast majority of companies, he says, “have at least one fax number.”
If you think about it, he’s no doubt right about that. Most businesses still use faxes to send signed legal documents, for managing HR and other systems, and for communicating in situations where the Internet may not be fully available.
Full disclosure, I’ve had a free eFax account for more than a decade. While most companies encourage contractors to scan and email their documents, the reality remains that faxing is still much easier for most people. “Your grandma can do it,” Flowers says. Plus, faxing doesn’t raise issues of dealing with large file sizes or the worry that the printed output won’t quite match the input.
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No one is arguing that traditional faxing’s best days are long passed. But that’s where cloud computing comes in, Flowers says. As owners of eFax (which lets you send and receive faxes via email), J2 says moving faxing to the Net (or the cloud) will help reintegrate it into the business mainstream.
Part of that is sheer hype, of course. Cloud computing is a lot sexier than faxing. But separating the concept of image scanning, sending, and remote printing (basically, what faxing does) from physical fax machines certainly does add new usefulness, even if it blurs the lines of what exactly “faxing” means.
For example, the ability to do a mobile scan—or simply to take a picture—from a smartphone and then send it to a fax machine (remote printing) or electronic fax account starts to make the fax concept more relevant. And there will always be a need to send paper documents.
But if you ask me, trying to extend the life of the “fax” concept by marrying it to cloud computing doesn’t go far enough. I think it’s too late to change the perception of fax technology as a 20th century solution no longer relevant in the digital age.
In the long run, it makes more sense to take the word “fax” out of Internet-based image communications, integrating it into other communications services while keeping faxing’s ubiquity and simplicity.
Ironically, J2’s portfolio of Net-based communications tools for small businesses puts it in an ideal position to do just that—except for the fact that eFax is its largest brand, with more than 13 million users and more than a decade of brand equity.
Hey, no one said that massive technological change would be easy.
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