Enterprises all over the world need instantaneous communications. Workers must be capable of sending and receiving documents at a moment's notice. But what constitutes effective transmissions of this nature is evolving. Mobile devices are considered a de facto productivity tool in today's workplace. As such, there is an increasing need for all channels of communication to be smartphone and tablet-friendly.
This is one of the primary reasons that email has been so popular as a business asset. Messages and documents can be sent over the Internet, allowing them to be received and archived conveniently. Email as a platform effortlessly made its way into mobile applications because it has been considered an apex of enterprise communications.
But for as popular as it has proven to be, email is surprisingly ineffective. It's main staying power has proven to be the fact that it can be used on smartphones and tablets. In actuality, it is protected by weak encryption methods and is subject to the bad habits of the people using it. While it is still appropriate for certain low-risk documents and correspondences, it is still too hazardous to be trusted with sensitive materials. This is so much so that case that certain fields like healthcare forbid its use by mandate.
Before email, faxing was the dominant method of document transmission for businesses. This technology is still very much in use today – those fields that ban certain usage of email require that fax machines are used in its place. The only problem is that a lot of faxing is done over traditional endpoints – archaic fax machines have not successfully adapted to modern mobility standards. The technology behind them, however, is just as suited for smartphones and tablets as email is.
Enterprises need 21st century faxing
In a world where cybersecurity is of the utmost importance, cloud-based fax is a valuable medium for any organization to have. This is in lieu of the fact that many professionals might write off faxing as dated and obsolete.
"Despite what many in the business world might say, fax has changed, but not gone away," wrote TMCnet contributor Randy Simmons. "Businesses still communicate with fax documents just as much as they have in the past. What has rapidly changed, though, is how faxes are sent. Business users do not receive paper faxes anymore."
Enterprise fax management is partially achieved through the cloud. Cloud-based fax is an incredibly secure way to transmit and receive important information. Email leaves itself too open to hacking and data loss – in addition to having lax protections around it, it is far too easy for people to be attached to the wrong messages. Cloud-based faxing does not have these problems.
A boon for healthcare
Cloud-based fax and Fax over IP rectifies a lot of modern problems. Mobility is in high demand these days, and people are likely to take the most convenient routes to productivity as opposed to using best practices. Despite the fact that email is banned in certain industries, there is nothing actually preventing people from using it. This isn't meant to be malicious, people just want to leverage what's most convenient. If they are provided with a better solution, they are going to use it.
This is where cloud fax can help to prevent data loss in a big way. By implementing it in a professional setting – namely healthcare – it is possible to stave off instances of poor judgment that can lead to security breaches. This is one of the reasons why Internet fax – as well as other cloud-powered services – are starting to take off in hospitals and other related facilities.
"As healthcare companies consider the opportunities and risks surrounding cloud computing, they can be sure their competitors are now evaluating cloud solutions, and quite possibly, adopting them," wrote Healthcare Global contributor Stephanie Ocano. "The healthcare industry's migration to cloud is inevitable; it's only a matter of time before all healthcare organizations embrace cloud computing."
Time to adopt cloud-based fax
There is a growing need for businesses of all sorts to have a high-security channel of communication. This has been commonly found in fax machines, but the dated nature of traditional hardware has led many to believe faxing is dead. This could not be further from the case. Rather than just accept email as the best that can be done, a re-imagining of faxing as a software-defined environment must occur. Viewing fax as a connection that resides in the cloud makes it inherently more appealing than requiring the use of irrelevant machines and practices. With cloud-based faxing, it is possible for organizations of all kinds to embrace the future without risking data loss.
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