OpenText: Taking the Fuss Out of Faxing
Katy Independent School District (ISD) cut costs and made people’s jobs easier by
moving from physical fax machines to a Fax over IP (FoIP) solution supported by
Cisco Unified Communications Manager.
CHALLENGE
Katy ISD is a booming school district encompassing 181 square miles in southeast
Texas. Student enrollment is more than 66,500 at 58 schools. With at least five fax
lines assigned to each campus and to the district’s administrative offices, Katy ISD
operates approximately 440 separate fax lines. After having used the same physical
fax server for several years, the district decided to upgrade to a two-server backup
system with redundancy, according to Vicky Spence, Katy ISD’s Systems Engineer.
As a school district that sends and receives more than 8,000 faxes per month but
could not send a fax from a PC, FoIP was an obvious option.
Since Katy ISD is a Cisco IP environment, it could install a virtual fax server and
consolidate the management of its fax lines. After researching FoIP solutions, the
district decided on OpenText RightFax, a Cisco Preferred Solution Developer.
RightFax is an easy-to-use, easy-to-manage system that helps enterprises integrate
voice, fax, data and desktop applications for powerful IP communications. The
world’s leading solution serving more than 30% of the market, RightFax enables
clients to send and receive documents securely and efficiently through fax, e-mail or
print devices. RightFax provides interoperability and a consistent implementation
approach, ensuring a streamlined FoIP integration.
“We chose RightFax primarily because of the Cisco relationship,” says Spence.
“Interoperability was the key driver.”
But not everyone in the district was immediately sold on FoIP. “Some departments
voiced reluctance with the concept,” says Spence. “They had dealt with other
companies and heard about issues of FoIP not being stable.” But after conducting
extensive research on OpenText and looking at the cost savings involved, the district
decided to move forward.
SOLUTION
Setup was smooth. Cisco dispatched resources to help onsite with the Cisco gateway,
and the district’s network team consulted with OpenText over the telephone.
Initially, the new FoIP solution ran in tandem with Katy ISD’s existing fax
environment for about a month to allow time to work through any routing issues. “It
took about a week to get the node working correctly on the back end, and then one
night to get everything flipped over and switched,” recalls Spence.
The biggest push for FoIP was cost savings. But the advantages are numerous – not
only the consolidation of all those fax lines, but also the ability to send and receive
faxes on desktops instead of having to scurry across the office to a physical fax
machine.
Despite early reluctance, today the district fully embraces FoIP. " OpenText RightFax
has far exceeded our expectations,” says Spence. “No problems, no issues. Just the
hardware savings alone are worth it."
According to Greg Settle, OpenText’s Unified Communications Practice Manager,
“This type of implementation confirms that OpenText’s partnership with Cisco and
our combined technologies are a reliable and powerful solution for our customers.”
RESULTS
Katy ISD began to realize savings immediately upon implementing the sustainable
RightFax solution. “We are pleased with the decision to move to a virtual server for
RightFax and go to FoIP,” says Spence. With OpenText RightFax there is no longer a
cost for physical fax machines. If you have a .PDF file format document you can fax
directly through email. According to Spence, the district has seen a significant
performance improvement in the new virtual environment. In the old physical
environment, the district experienced various hardware issues and the IT group
routinely spent time rebooting the server to resolve application problems.
“Functionality in the new FoIP and virtual world has improved tremendously.” says
Spence.
With the RightFax solution, the district saves money on maintenance and repair,
toner cartridges and expenses associated with traditional faxing. “All those costs
add up,” notes Spence. In the old environment, Katy ISD had to pay for machines and
lines whether or not they were in use. But with RightFax the district only uses what
it needs.
About OpenText
OpenText provides Enterprise Information Management software that helps
companies of all sizes and industries to manage, secure and leverage their
unstructured business information, either in their data center or in the cloud. Over
50,000 companies already use OpenText solutions to unleash the power of their
information. To learn more about OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX; TSX: OTC), please
visit: www.opentext.com
Quote
"OpenText has far exceeded our expectations. No problems, no issues. Just the
hardware savings alone are worth it."
- Vicky Spence, System Engineer, Katy ISD
Products
 Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.5
 OpenText RightFax, Business Server PDF Module, 24 FoIP Fax Channels
Executive Summary
OpenText fax products and services increase employee productivity and reduce
expensive paper, telephony and hardware costs. The company has deployed more
than 100,000 fax servers worldwide.
RightFax integrates with Cisco Unified Communication Manager via the real time
T.38 FoIP standard. This integration eases administration of call traffic by
combining voice and fax into a centralized dial plan within Cisco Unified
Communications Manager. Fax routing options include delivery based on measures
within Cisco Unified Communications Manager such as time and other criteria.
Business Challenge
 Move from physical fax machine and servers to FoIP and virtualization
 Take advantage of Cisco Unified Communications for routing and redundancy
 Achieve cost efficiencies via both initiatives
Solution
 FOIP enabled RightFax
 Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.5
Business Results
 Virtualization of RightFax and FoIP integration to Cisco Unified
Communications Manager realized significant cost savings
 Reduced costs associated with physical servers and analog telephony vs.
moving to a virtual environment via FoIP and call routing through Cisco