Austrian Post replaces fax servers with Retarus Fax Services

 Austrian Post has chosen to consolidate its existing IT infrastructure by implementing Retarus Managed Fax Services. The Microsoft-certified service Retarus Faxolution for Exchange in combination with the inbound fax service Retarus Fax-to-email provides Austrian Post with almost unlimited fax communication capacities. On top of that, Austrian Post will benefit from maximum reliability as well as transparent administration of all fax communications.

When compared to conventional fax server infrastructures, cloud fax services and managed fax services offer a number of benefits, such as improved reliability, an end to capacity bottlenecks and a major boost in flexibility. IT analysts have also observed the benefits of this technology and therefore recommend companies switch over from fax servers to such services when consolidating their IT infrastructure. In spring 2012 Austrian Post commissioned its IT service provider – Atos IT Solutions and Services GmbH – with finding an alternative to its current fax servers. The idea behind this was to implement an electronic fax delivery system that would help to streamline the company’s architecture, in turn reducing costs and maintenance for its fax communication processes. A brief evaluation revealed that the cloud-based managed fax services Retarus Faxolution for Exchange and Retarus Fax-to-email were ideally matched to Austrian Post’s needs, both in terms of feature set and ease of use.

Send faxes easily with Microsoft Exchange

Faxes are still very much an everyday form of business communication for Austrian Post’s 1,800 employees who send more than 30,000 messages and business documents a month to customers and partners all over the world. Thanks to Retarus Faxolution for Exchange, employees will now find it even easier to send faxes both within Austria and further afield. “Faxolution for Exchange provides Austrian Post with a highly professional cloud fax service that’s fully integrated within the Microsoft Exchange environment. That way, every employee can easily send faxes of all kinds directly from their Outlook client”, said Reinhard Knie, Head of Solution Management CEE at Atos. In addition to offering a great feature set and ease of use, Retarus Faxolution for Exchange saves the cost of any fax hardware and software, while also providing highly transparent administration.

Conversion and delivery via the Retarus fax infrastructure

Messages – including all attached MS Office and PDF documents – are converted and then actually sent out as a fax via Retarus’ multiply redundant data centers, alleviating the need for an in-house fax infrastructure. Users have the option of various different fax cover sheets, and can choose whether sender and recipient details such as name, address, and phone or fax number should be displayed and sent. Transmission reports are automatically delivered within ten minutes of sending a fax.

Receive faxes the easy way – by email

Retarus Fax-to-email will automatically redirect inbound fax messages to specific email inboxes. Retarus is providing some 2,000 fax numbers for inbound faxes to Austrian Post. That way every fax user has his/her own extension number. All incoming faxes are delivered as emails with a TIFF or PDF file attached. Existing extension numbers have been ported to the new electronic fax delivery and reception system. All of the fax documents received digitally can be integrated into existing workflow systems, if required.

“The number of fax users and faxes being sent are set to rise in the future. Austrian Post will continue to gradually phase out the existing fax hardware and replace it with Retarus services. During this very brief project phase, Retarus proved to be an excellent project partner, which is why we’ve made them our global fax provider”, added Reinhard Knie.