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Fax Server Solutions for 2005?
Glove d'OJ asks: "For a recent project at work, we are investigating enterprise-wide fax server solutions. Ideally, it would have a rich API for custom development, as well as all of the standard 'fax as a printer' and 'email out a fax' capabilities. Throughout all of my research, however, most of the decent reviewing sites all appear to have last reviewed this technology sometime last century, i.e., 1999 (or in 2000 for the purists.) I cannot find a single somewhat-recent review. Timeliness is definitely important in looking for the API. if the latest documentation refers to 'that new fangled C++' and was written in the pre-C# era, I could have some rough choices ahead. Is this an old technology that is no longer in vogue, or is there a single clear choice with no competition (thus not even requiring a recent review)?"
I haven't used it, since our management changed their minds, but it would have been my first choice:
http://www.hylafax.org/
We use VSIfax with our Linux application. It's very easy to integrate into an existing application. It does the print-to-fax and mail interface for Windows clients. From a *nix host, it's a command-line interface. VSIfax is expensive, but it's reliable and does what you need.
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
I just setup a small fax server for a small insurance office (15 employees) on a old Pentium 200 with 64mb ram and 2 USR PCI modems (class 1 fax capabilites) - 2 dedicated lines, one for in and one for out. Hylafax and some glue (LAMP, php-cli, mailm, and some bash script). Print to a samba printer (search for smbfax, then re-write it in a few lines of bash), sends email to smbusername@localhost, user checks email, enters destination number and some cover page info, fax sends.
Its been running for just over a month now, 3000 faxes in, 2000 faxes out, no issues.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
The company that I recently joined is/has been using RightFax, and it seems like a quality product, I spoke with our local helpdesk and there are a very low occurance of problems with it.
A link to RightFax
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
The reason for the lack of current reviews is simply because of a lack of "current" products. Fax technology has changed little if any at all in the past ten years so, what was a viable solution ten years ago, is still just as viable today. New features have been tried. Some, like routing, have been tried repeatedly without being truly successful. There just isn't a whole lot more that you can add to a fax server while maintaining interoperability with the world's fax machines.
As far as recommending a fax product, there are numerous commercial ones available, some are even "New and Improved" but, since you asked on Slashdot, I'll recommend the open source choice, Hylafax, despite your C# requirement. It's open so you can develop on or against it to your heart's content. Something I doubt any of the commercial offerings will permit.
This brings us to your final requirement where the api's language must be modern. I'm not certain, but, I think that Hylafax is written in C so it definitely doesn't fit your C# requirements, despite the fact that the two languages are not mutually exclusive unless you make them so in your own head. But, requiring that a decades old solution be "up-to-date" in terms of the programming language seems a bit unreasonable to me. Must a fax application be rewritten in the latest fad language solely for the the sake of the language?
What I suspect you will wind up doing is some VB script that uses DCOM to print-to-fax from a Windows 2003 server.