What is Cloud Fax?

As its name implies, cloud faxing is 100% cloud-based. Cloud fax empowers you to send and receive faxes through an Internet fax service provider’s cloud-based platform. With this service, documents are sent and received over the internet instead of a traditional telephone line. 

However, you don’t have to store data locally with cloud faxing. Instead, your fax information gets stored on a cloud-based fax server.  In this way, cloud faxing is a reliable service that can help you meet your business needs.

How Does Cloud-Based Faxing Work?

The fax-to-cloud process is quick and easy and can be done from any device, from anywhere, with no fax machine or office space required.

To send a cloud fax, you’ll first need to create an account. You can do so by downloading your fax app or opening your online fax service in a web browser. After creating your account:

• Select your document and add a fax cover sheet. 
• Add the fax number of your recipient or select one from your saved numbers in your account. 
• Hit send, and your fax is instantly sent to the recipient. 

Understanding the Cloud

Cloud computing is a catchall term for services hosted using the internet. These services include:

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
• Platform as a service (PaaS)
• Software as a service (SaaS)

Cloud computing enables devices to access data and applications using the internet. Providers deliver cloud-based fax services using remote computers, databases and servers.

Understanding Cloud Fax Services

Cloud faxing is a SaaS offering people may describe in several ways. For instance, you may hear it called “Fax to cloud” or “Online cloud fax”. Cloud faxing works with various operating systems, including:

• Windows
• macOS
• Android
• iOS

Key Benefits of Using Cloud Faxing Solutions

A cloud fax service offers a number of clear benefits over traditional faxes. First off, you’re no longer tied to a machine that needs upkeep and maintenance—not to mention the associated costs—or that requires you to be in the office to use it. Instead, you can send cloud-based faxes from anywhere, at any time, as long as you have access to the cloud.

As your business grows and you find that you need to send more faxes, cloud faxing enables you to scale your faxing capabilities with ease. Whether you need to add more users to your online fax account or scale the number of faxes you’re sending out, an cloud fax service eliminates many of the hurdles you’d face with a traditional fax machine, like increased maintenance, the need for additional machines or the domino effect of downtime.

Boosting Business Productivity with Cloud Faxing

Small changes can make significant productivity improvements. The biggest benefit you’ll notice with cloud faxing is increasing your team’s productivity. Enterprise cloud fax solutions simplify the process of sending essential faxes. They also eliminate problems like receiving junk faxes.

All cloud fax documents are digital. There’s no need to shuffle papers. You also don’t have to waste time refilling empty ink cartridges or servicing a broken fax machine.

In addition, cloud faxing reduces transmission time drastically. You can send and receive cloud faxes nearly instantaneously. Because there are no delays with cloud faxes, your team can get more done more quickly.

1. Simplification Equals Improved Productivity

For many companies, fax volume is on the rise. However, enterprises are moving away from traditional fax machines and complex server infrastructures and embracing cloud fax services.

Cloud-based fax services are very desirable for organizations. They simplify the work environment dramatically. Also, they empower organizations to eliminate the on-site complexity of software and hardware for fax telephony. At the same time, enterprise cloud fax solutions have all the capabilities of an on-site corporate fax server.

With these points in mind, the only thing you need to consider when choosing a cloud fax solution is the reputation of your service provider over time. At eFax, we’ve earned a stellar reputation serving business faxing needs for more than two decades.

2. Keeping Your Digital Documents Safe

The eFax Protect plan offers advanced security encryption, which provides maximum security for your confidential and essential faxes. With AES 256-bit encryption, you don’t receive faxes in your email inbox. Instead, you’ll receive a notification email from the MyPortal Messenger Center. AES 256-bit encryption is a fast and super-secure method for retrieving your cloud fax documents.

3. Secure Storage for Corporate Communication

Most cloud fax services are secure and modern. They also provide a way for users to store, access and manage digital faxes.

However, enterprise-grade cloud faxing offers added advanced features. For instance, it gives you and your team an online dashboard. You can easily and securely see where you stored all your past fax communications using the dashboard. This tool offers an easy way to search for documents and sort through fax transmission records.

Why Cloud Migration is Important For Enterprise-Grade Businesses?

In recent years, cloud computing has rapidly grown in popularity. Spurred by a desire to reduce IT costs, increase efficiency and improve flexibility, more businesses are opting to move their infrastructure to the cloud. In fact, by 2025, experts predict that 85% of enterprises will have a cloud-first approach.

Migrating data to the cloud offers a number of benefits, including:

• Streamlining of business operations.
• Access to a variety of online tools, such as internet-based phone services and online cloud fax solutions.
• A more secure, affordable and scalable solution for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

What Is Enterprise Cloud Migration?

The way that companies share data internally has changed drastically over the past several decades. Before computers became widely available, paper copies and filing cabinets allowed companies to create, collaborate on and store information. 

As files became digitized, the space required to store them and how quickly they could be duplicated and shared changed. Companies began relying on in-house databases, as well as tools like copiers and scanners that made it possible to move their files to the cloud.

The cloud is the next revolution in how businesses operate. Enterprise cloud is a computing model that enables businesses to store their data online, streamline their digital infrastructure, access virtual IT services and take advantage of online services like faxing. This latest revolution in how data is stored, used and shared allows for faster, more streamlined workflows and lets employees collaborate from anywhere.

 6 Benefits of Cloud Migration

The many benefits of cloud migration are spurring the growing number of businesses making the move.

• Having your business’ data stored on the cloud and providing access to automation services makes it faster and easier for employees to get access to the tools and data they need.
• The cloud streamlines collaboration, so employees from around the world or in separate offices down the street can work together more effectively.
  
• Moving from an on-site storage solution to cloud-based storage offers major cost savings.
  
• As your business grows, scaling your cloud resources is easier, as well as more flexible, than with other storage solutions.
  
• Cloud expenses can be adjusted to fit your business’s current budget.
  
• Most cloud infrastructure options today provide top-notch security to keep your business’s sensitive data safe from the growing threat of ransomware and other forms of malware.

What Are Some of the Common Cloud Migration Challenges?

Making the move to the cloud offers plenty of clear benefits. But this doesn’t mean that businesses won’t face some roadblocks along the way. Which challenges your business may face will depend on your unique situation, as well as your strategy for migrating. Some common challenges businesses face include:

• Lacking a clear strategy from the start, which means that different applications and sets of data are then being migrated individually. This can cause delays and slow down the process.
  
• Not having a plan can also cause costs to swell, as new tech and applications are added as needed without considering overall spending.
  
• Depending on the industry, another big challenge may be ensuring compliance during the transition to the cloud. For instance, HIPAA privacy rules require that extra care is taken to ensure data security and compliance at all times, including when migrating data to the cloud.

3 Key Steps For A Successful Cloud Migration

Much like the challenges that businesses face, the cloud migration process will vary for each. But to guarantee a smooth transition, businesses should follow some similar steps when moving to the cloud. 

Step 1: Planning

The first step is to create a cloud migration plan. Planning ahead helps you clarify your company’s “why” for moving to the cloud. With this information solidly in place, you can then make decisions about which applications or technology to invest in, which data needs to be transitioned first and what security measures you may need for data protection. 

This approach can help with cost optimization, as your business can take the time to consider which applications and services to invest in first, and which can wait.

Step 2: Migration

The next step is the migration itself. With a plan in place, you can transition each department or data set individually and smoothly, and be ready for each set as it comes. 

Step 3: Upkeep

The final step in a successful cloud migration strategy is to have a plan in place for ongoing upkeep. Having the right cloud migration tools is essential to ensuring that data is safe and secure and that your business’s workflow isn’t interrupted during the process. This includes having a backup system in place to protect you from data loss, as well as a security suite to safeguard your data and infrastructure from malicious actors.

How eFax Can Help You Migrate to Cloud Faxing?

Whether your business is looking to cut costs or preparing for future growth, making the move to the cloud is an important step. If you’ve already migrated, now is a great time to consider adopting cloud faxing as well. It’s easy to switch to eFax cloud faxing services.

Find out today how eFax can enhance your document workflow.  Claim your eFax number today!

Faxing is still a standard means of communication for many businesses. However, its role in the modern workplace is sometimes overlooked. Don’t let your organization miss out on the benefits of fax integrations.

Fax integration is a way to integrate electronic faxing capabilities into your existing workflow. This can be possible with or without a physical fax machine present. It allows you to fax documents over the internet, by email, from an application, or in the cloud.

For example, many companies and individuals send faxes via email through an online fax provider such as eFax. The emailed fax document goes to a secure server, and the provider then faxes it to the recipient.

Though it may sound complicated, we’ll explain fax integrations in more detail in this article. We’ll also show you how integrated faxes can automate and optimize your communications.

4 Types of Fax Integrations

Fax technology has been around for a long time — in fact, it was the first way to send documents over a phone line. Today, it continues to be an efficient and secure way to send information around the world. 

As technology has developed, online fax systems have emerged. There is now a need to incorporate fax machines, phone lines, and the internet into one cohesive system.

Below, we’ll look at the different types of fax integrations, from simple to complex systems.

1. Software Integrations for Fax Workflows

With faxing software integrations, you use a third-party service to integrate fax capabilities into your existing communication applications and workflow. For example, you can use software integrations to use faxing in:

• Desktop applications
• Web-based applications
• Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Drive
• Mobile fax apps

Each solution will function differently depending on your fax provider, but they don’t require you to invest in any hardware. 

For example, eFax makes it very easy to integrate fax functionality into Google Docs. To send faxes in this application, you only need to set up eFax messenger as a printer in Google Docs. 

2. Custom Fax Integrations for Business Applications

Business applications sometimes require custom integration solutions. These solutions typically use an application programming interface (API) from a fax provider to make your fax protocols useable from multiple machines on your network. 

Fax integrations for business applications use the fax API to set up a custom fax server for your company. You will then be able to integrate services that may not be supported by consumer-level fax service providers. Common features of custom integrations include:

• Automated workflows — These tools automatically receive incoming faxes and place them in a designated fax folder
• Platform integration — With platform integrations, you can send faxes from customer relationship management (CRM) platforms
• Advanced audit logs — With this feature, you can track all faxes sent to and from your company

3. Hardware Fax Integrations for Paper Documents

If you still have physical fax machines, there are ways to integrate your existing hardware into digital processes. This type of integration, also known as a native integration, lets you convert paper documents into electronic faxes. It also allows you to receive paper copies of online faxes. 

If you have a multifunction device (a printer/scanner/copier/fax combo, or MFD) or multifunction printer (MFP) you can use it with your online fax provider. You can send faxes over the internet by scanning a paper document with your MFD, then entering the fax number in the format given by your fax provider.

Once you hit send, the fax will be sent electronically through a secure fax server. Online faxes you receive will also be printed from your MFD.

4. Cloud-Based Fax Integrations

Cloud-based fax integrations such as eFax are becoming ever more popular. This type of integration allows you to send and receive faxes by email. 

For example, you can send faxes from an email address by opening up your email application as usual. Attach your documents, enter the fax recipient’s number in the “To:” field as directed by your fax provider, and hit send. Upon successful transmission, you’ll receive a notification to your email address. 

Some fax services also use transport layer security (TLS) encryption. This is a highly secure cryptographic protocol that protects all data you transmit. 

Some cloud infrastructures offer other advanced features. At a minimum, you’ll want to make sure that your integrated fax provider offers:

• Automatic re-transmission — This ensures the fax gets resent immediately if it doesn’t send successfully. 
• Error correction — This feature monitors the signal throughout the fax transmission. It will resend any parts that are lost due to noise in the phone line or poor Internet connection to complete the transmission without having to resend the entire fax.

3 Key Advantages of Fax Integrations

Let’s look at the top three advantages of fax integrations for modern businesses to see how they can save businesses time, money, and effort.

1. Improved Workflow Process With Fax Integrations

Integrating fax capabilities into your business workflow gives you more flexibility with your documents and communication. You may be out of the office and need to send an urgent fax. With the right fax capabilities, you can simply send the fax from your mobile phone. 

By combining all of your document management processes into a single system, you can also make your business more efficient. Eliminating the need to switch between devices makes communications simpler and less prone to error. 

Online faxing also allows you to monitor your fax activity in real time. If your fax provider offers fax tracking, you can check the status of your fax while in transit.

2. Eliminating the Need for Physical Fax Machines

Nowadays, many companies are replacing their bulky, paper-filled fax machines with advanced digital options. Fax integrations eliminate the need for physical fax machines and reduce paper use. They allow you to send and receive faxes electronically through a secure online platform without the need for fax machine maintenance and supplies. 

3. Enhancing Security for Fax Documents

Fax integrations can help to make your communication protocols more secure and reliable. Faxed documents are encrypted in transit, protecting them from data breaches or malicious attacks. This is critical if you’re sharing sensitive information such as Social Security numbers or financial documents. 

With an integrated fax system in place, You can also control who has access to the system. With traditional fax machines, anyone can pick up an incoming fax from the tray or make changes to a fax before it is sent. 

With online fax integration, you can ensure that only authorized users have access to faxes. That’s because most fax integrations have password-protecting folders or user permission features.

Choosing the Right Fax Integration for Your Business

When choosing the right fax integration software for your business processes, you’ll want to make sure it’s reliable and easy to use. 

With eFax, you can rest assured knowing you’re getting the most comprehensive service at an unbeatable price. Our industry-leading features make us the ideal choice for streamlining your faxing operations.

It’s probably fair to say your organization has invested a great deal in fax technology over the years, and despite the fact that most of the rest of the world has moved on to digital faxing, some paper faxing is still necessary. Does that mean you should just live with the inconvenience? Maybe you should switch to a hybrid model? Or does it make sense to transition to the cloud? We’ll answer each of those questions in this post.

Four reasons not to stay with on-prem faxing

This is the easy part. Other than inertia, there are no reasons to continue to run an on-prem fax infrastructure. Here are a few reasons:

1. Fax servers and desktop fax machines depend on the plain old telephony service (POTS), and the FCC is requiring telecom carriers to phase out their POTS services this year. Even if a few carriers don’t comply right away, your network is going to become less reliable and more challenging to manage.
2. Your IT department should not be spending time keeping fax servers operational with up-to-date cards and software licenses, purging data to keep fax hard drives from filling, monitoring and replenishing toner and other supplies, and monitoring usage levels to anticipate capacity needs.
3. Fax troubleshooting is a waste of time. People dislike using faxes, and the people who have to try to figure out why a fax won’t go through or wasn’t received dislikes it even more. 
4. The technology isn’t just old, it’s ancient. Fax machines are a holdover from the 1980s, and they depend on telephony infrastructure launched in the 1880s.

Four reasons hybrid faxing is not the answer

So, on-prem faxing isn’t the answer for a litany of reasons. Check. How about hybrid faxing? In theory, hybrid faxing offers in-house control with the efficiency of the cloud. But there are some problems with that theory:
 

1. Hardware limits. This model depends on in-house fax servers, so there are still tough decisions to be made about capacity (e.g., when to buy a new server when fax usage reaches the limits of your hardware).
2. Time Lost mired in the details of administrative processes. With hybrid faxing, you will still have to monitor and maintain your on-prem servers, purge and archive server data, update software, and troubleshoot problems.
3. Security – your data could be at risk. You’ll continue to face security/regulatory issues. For example, employees print faxes and delete the stored ones but don’t securely store the hardcopies. Similarly, employees might move the stored fax data to a digital location that’s not encrypted or secured. These unsecured practices open the door for third parties to steal or manipulate your data.
4. Cost Savings. You’re paying double for your faxing system with either option in comparison to faxing in the cloud. You have the expense of maintaining on-prem fax servers while paying a third party to manage the cloud component of your
   fax environment.

We told you about the downside to prem and hybrid faxing. The experts agree that cloud faxing is the smart choice. Here are seven reasons to choose cloud faxing over other options:

1. Cloud faxing has a much lower total cost of ownership. We have seen companies lower their faxing costs by 50% or more in comparison to these two other choices.
2. Cloud fax frees up your IT team to spend their time on more important things.
3. If the provider you choose has a geographically redundant network, you’ll never experience fax downtime.
4. Advanced cloud fax solutions encrypt your fax data in transit and in storage and bring your faxing processes in line with industry regulations.
5. You can scale your faxing capacity up or down as needed—no buy-or-wait decisions needed.
6. Your staff will have access to a full-featured faxing program from their desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, so they can respond quickly to incoming faxes.
7. Your employees will be delighted when you take away their clunky and high maintenance fax processes and replace them with the ability to receive, review, edit, sign, and send digital faxes from an email, a website, or their phone, while reducing their technology footprint. 

Choosing a cloud fax provider

There are dozens of cloud fax companies, but they’re not all the same. Consensus Cloud Solutions, provider of eFax Corporate, is the world’s largest and most experienced global cloud fax provider. Here’s why you should look into eFax Corporate:

Experience. Building a highly robust cloud fax infrastructure isn’t easy, and it’s expensive. eFax Corporate has been serving businesses continuously for more than 25 years and has invested millions in building an enterprise-caliber cloud faxing infrastructure that’s secure and reliable.

Cloud native. Most faxing platforms use the vendor’s private data centers (or a combination of those and the public cloud). These solutions are difficult and time-consuming to manage. eFax Corporate was purpose-built for the cloud, so it scales quickly, has robust redundancy, and performs better than any other cloud fax platform. 

Large network. eFax Corporate has built the world’s largest cloud fax network to establish economies of scale no other provider can match. This means a more cost-effective solution for our customers.

Full AWS integration. eFax Corporate is the only cloud fax solution fully integrated into Amazon Web Services’ Cloud. By leveraging Amazon’s reliability, scalability, efficiency, and systems uptime, we can provide the industry’s best disaster recovery, fastest fax delivery times, and the lowest cost in the market.

If your company is stuck with outdated processes like on-prem faxing or even hybrid faxing for the foreseeable future, think about moving to the cloud. eFax Corporate can lower your costs, free up IT for more important projects, and make your
employees happy.

Most everyone would agree that welcoming in a new year provides hope, but as COVID-19 continues to bring about lasting ramifications for the healthcare industry, it continues to shed a light on the importance of continuity of care. As providers treat and manage the care of those impacted by the virus coupled with vaccination planning, improving healthcare information exchange empowers physicians, care coordinators and health insurance companies to make informed clinical decisions at the point of care.

To help the industry meet this critical need, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed a new rule aimed at streamlining prior authorization processes to help reduce provider and patient burden while promoting patient’s electronic access to health information. According to information released by CMS, this proposed rule builds on the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule and would place new requirements on Medicaid and CHIP managed care plans, state Medicaid and CHIP fee-for-service programs, and Qualified Health Plans (QHP) issuers on the Federally-facilitated Exchanges (FFEs) to improve the electronic exchange of health care data, and streamline processes related to prior authorization. The CMS fact sheet goes on to explain how this proposed rule would require increased patient electronic access to their health care information and would improve the electronic exchange of health information among payers, providers, and patients. Together, these policies would play a key role in reducing overall payer and provider burden and improving patient access to health information.Following the initial release of this proposed new rule in December of last year, CMS included several requests for information (RFIs) to support future rulemaking or other initiatives – one which pertained to reducing the use of facsimile (fax) technology across programs. In response, Consensus, Inc. – the company behind eFax corporate –  took the opportunity to address this RFI through the submission of a formal comment letter to CMS, explaining the significance of Digital Cloud Fax Technology (DCFT) to the larger drive toward total interoperability. It was critical to offer these insights as a means of voicing our concern as to how the broad category of “facsimile (fax) technology” may unintentionally impact the delivery of care for many providers who use DCFT to exchange patient information, order medications, and receive test results from labs.

Digital Cloud Fax Technology’s Impact

• Secure, paperless, cost effective and proven way for providers, payers and ancillary services to share documents and records
• HIPAA-compliant
• Integrates with existing EHR technology
• Falls under the HIMSS category of “foundational interoperability”
• Critical technology for rural healthcare organizations and financially challenged urban clinics

It must be stated, Consensus supports efforts to improve interoperability and promote the electronic exchange of healthcare data, including giving patients and providers access to prior authorization information to better manage care while reducing the burden on the healthcare system. With policy changes like this latest CMS proposed rule set to improve patient access and advance electronic data exchange, the days of the physical, paper-based fax machine are clearly numbered. So, while we agree with CMS’s desire to remove paper faxing from the process of data exchange, we believe that CMS failed to recognize the use of HIPAA compliant Digital Cloud Fax APIs, which serve an easy interoperable and integrated solution for secure document exchange for patient data today within process workflows and significantly easing the burden on the providers required to comply with any new rules.

We also expressed how there are unique circumstances that might present a challenge to meet the proposed compliance date, including resource challenges, funding, existing system incompatibility and lack of reliable core infrastructure – especially in rural settings. Depending on when the final rule is published in relation to a state’s budget process and timeline some states may not be able to secure the needed funds in time to both develop and execute implementation of the API requirements by the proposed compliance date. Some areas may have difficulty in finding needed IT resources for the development work.

Finally, our letter stressed how this accelerated comment period is unusual for such a significant proposal. Which is why we requested that CMS and ONC extend the comment period to a minimum of 60 days after publication in the Federal Register so the potential impacts of the proposed changes can be better evaluated, and a greater number of comprehensive and thoughtful comments can be considered. 

What we all must understand is that fax doesn’t necessarily lump cloud faxing technology in with the paper fax machine – it is a protocol. Digital Cloud Faxing Technology is secure, HIPAA compliant and can certainly be interactive. Fax is a known quantity for being able to move information from one point to another securely privately and with a high degree of reliability and is pervasive among providers of all kinds. As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) works to meet the goal they set of achieving total interoperability by 2024, Consensus looks to align with the goals of CMS to eliminate paper, increase security and facilitate electronic transactions. Digital cloud fax technology is a natural fit for meeting those goals while presenting information in a way that providers and payers in all settings and locations are accustomed.Our letter, in its entirety, can be viewed here: https://beta.regulations.gov/comment/CMS-2020-0157-0058