Although raw forms of faxing have been around since the mid-to-late 1800s, the fax machine as we know it today has existed in various configurations since the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, faxing became a very popular and economical communication tool and was being used in both the corporate and private sectors. But, is sending a fax still a viable business tool with such a wide array of advanced technologies available?

The answer to that question is there’s no sign that faxing will be going away anytime soon. Even with increased competition from digital alternatives, businesses usually maintain some kind of in-house faxing capability.

Particularly in the transmission of sensitive information, faxing still retains some advantage over newer technologies. If sensitive information is sent over the Internet unencrypted, it is vulnerable to interception. Another advantage in using faxes is electronic signatures. Some countries do not recognize an electronic signature as legally binding, while still accepting them if faxed.

Oddly enough, both methods can easily be forged. There’s no real proof that the person clicking the online button is who they say they are. Same goes for faxed signatures. It doesn’t take a career criminal to figure out that taping a copy of a stolen signature to a document, then faxing it, is probably the easiest way to execute a convincing forgery.

The journey of a fax is one of many formats. The average faxed document is in paper form twice and digital form four times along with an analog sound file once. It would make sense to create the file once (digitally) and use digital transmission methods to send the document. On that note, the future of the analog fax machine now falls into the hands of the digital world.

In many corporate environments, standalone fax machines have been replaced by “fax servers” and other computerized systems capable of receiving, sending and storing incoming/outgoing faxes electronically. The fax services then route them to users via an e-mail. Such systems reduce costs by eliminating the need for paper printouts and the required number of analog phone lines.

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