Introduction:
It may come as a surprise with the ubiquity of the Internet that the Fortune 500 still rely on fax technology for mission critical applications. The nation’s largest retailers communicate between stores and distribution centers via fax technology, for example. Fax technology allows them to transmit sensitive data such as credit card (PCI) and ordering information securely between stores and distribution centers requiring without traversing the Internet or email. Other applications include HIPPA and EDI applications that the Fortune 500 relies on every day that have to be secure. Read the article on LinkedIn.
Below is an interview with Fred Tanzella, CEO of Cirracore and Doug Olive, CEO of Ingenium Software to discuss a cloud partnership that helps the Fortune 500 execute fax operations every day.
Good morning gentlemen. Can you give us a brief overview of your respective companies?
Fred Tanzella:
Hello, I am the CEO of Cirracore, and Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. We are a VMware vCloud Air enterprise cloud provider and host in Equinix facilities and serve a global customer base. We provide enterprise-grade cloud solutions in the form of virtual private data centers with dedicated cores, RAM and multiple tiers of storage performance. We’re unique in the fact that we can directly connect customers to over 180 carriers with our presence in the carrier hotel in Atlanta.
Doug Olive:
Ingenium is a trusted and experienced integrator of fax server, pbx and secure information exchange platforms. Many of our customers rely on fax communication between their clients and trading partners. Fax can be a challenge to maintain and support for some, so we also offer fax hosting and managed services to our customers that have a need mission critical support and high uptime.
How did your relationship between an IaaS cloud provider and Fax provider come about?
Fred Tanzella:
Ingenium has been a long time customer of Cirracore and were collocating their equipment with us at our Equinix data center in Atlanta. Over time Doug and I built a stronger relationship and found that we could both benefit from working together. Doug’s business primary focus was not maintaining hardware. We proposed a cloud solution that was more flexible and higher availability that would take Ingenium out of the hardware business. Today, Ingenium’s entire system runs in Cirracore’s Enterprise Cloud.
What are some examples of applications that Fortune 500 companies are using fax technology to solve and why fax and not a newer technology?
Doug Olive:
Most large companies have the 80/20 rule. 80% of their customer base is using EDI while the other 20% is using fax. From consumer car loans, lumber delivery, mortgage services and warranty claims, faxing remains a critical communication method for conducting B2C and B2B transactions. Fax is secure, reliable and easy to use. Anyone can send a fax and it’s also recognized by the Federal courts as a legal document.
What are the services you provide as the cloud provider for the fax applications?
Fred Tanzella:
At Cirracore, we are able to provide a secure, high availability, and highly scalable environment to Ingenium and it’s customers. Cirracore provides private virtual data centers based on VMware cloud that is widely adopted throughout the Fortune 500, so they are familiar with how our cloud works. We provide dedicated cores, RAM and three tiers of performance profile storage that the customer can scale via a web interface. Cirracore provides cloud backup that allows customers to backup/restore files on a retention period as well as continuous replication to our Dallas, Texas Equinix data center for business continuity/disaster recovery (DR).
