I recently had the opportunity, albeit limited to work with GFI's FAXmaker 14 product. I understand that there are still a great deal of companies that rely on FAX communication, whether it is communicate with remote locations that do not have computers or perhaps a simple method of transmitting signed documents is required. I actually fax contracts on occasion as well so I am also guilty of relying on this crutch. When it comes down to it though the FAX machine is piece of technology that needs fills a need but does so in an antiquated yet efficient manner.
I've worked with my share of FAX to Exchange products over the years and have always had reservations on using them, due to complexity and what I feel as a high hardware entry price.
Installation and Administration
As with other GFI products the documentation for FAXmaker is excellent. The step-by-step installation guide is thorough and clear and seems to have the appropriate amount of detail even for those people installing their first FAX gateway. I was able to get FAXmaker up and running in about 25 minutes on Exchange Server 2007.
One of the features that I got working right away was the Email2FAXGateway which is a service that watches an Exchange mailbox for incoming messages and faxes them out to to the contact or phone number listed on the first line of the message, this worked as expected as well.
Overall the management interface is laid out as you would expect and has a very mature selection of options. You can really tell that this product has been around for awhile and that the developers listen to feedback. For example, you can set backup and printing options for each line and create a number of different routing rules based on keyword.
Monitoring the status of FAXmaker is done in the GFI FAXmaker Monitor MMC, this gives an overview of what is being processed and any errors that have occurred. It also gives a quick one-button service restart option for each of the services, this is nice when you are trying to troubleshoot agents and perhaps flaky FAX cards.
Any improvements?
Being a critical person of course there are a couple of things that I think could be changed. This version does support Exchange 2007 and does have some Fax over IP functionality which is great. I would really like to see a partnership or FoIP service integration that doesn't require any special hardware in the server similar to how the Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging role works. I did read that FAXmaker supports the Dialogic Diva softIP server software which does appear to do this, but again I haven't found any documentation that describes using this to leverage a third party FoIP provider.
The reason for this is that real fax boards are expensive and from experience a little problematic. I would much rather run a fax server in my office if I didn't have to pay $12,000-30,000 for a fax modem in addition to the monthly T1-PRI service. Sure you can use a standard fax/modem if you don't want DID routing and other features, but those will also give you and more headaches since they were designed for this type of faxing.
The Verdict
FAXmaker should definitely be considered if your company is looking to use an Exchange-based FAX server. The ease of configuration, excellent documentation, mature product based all make it an easy recommendation.
Product info
Overview: http://www.gfi.com/faxmaker/
Features: http://www.gfi.com/faxmaker/faxfeatures.htm
Datasheet: http://www.gfi.com/faxmaker/faxbrochure.pdf