London, UK, 20 April 2006 – Leading developer of network security, GFI, today released a report on how companies can streamline faxing technology to improve employee productivity. The report examines the costs involved in manual faxing and estimates that the average yearly cost for businesses sending 50 faxes per day is USD 26,000. The report concludes that GFI’s integrated fax solution, GFI FAXmaker, can reduce the annual cost of manually sending 50 faxes per day to USD 2,600, if they are sent directly from their email client.

A recent Gallup/Pitney Bowes poll of Fortune 500 companies conducted in the US discovered that faxing is still the number one method for sending and receiving official international messages that must be signed for, at an average cost of USD 15 million per year. Whilst email is still the most common form of business communication, until the digital signature is deemed as a legal entity, many industries are still reliant on faxing.

GFI FAXmaker integrates with any email server and allows employees to send, receive, view, print, and save faxes from any PC or laptop without having to print a copy or visit the fax machine, which improves efficiency and productivity by allowing employees more time to carry out other business tasks.

“We switched from a competitor to GFI FAXmaker, which immediately proved the best choice for our company. With our previous system, we were constantly calling technical support, averaging 35 hours working through problems annually. GFI FAXmaker for Exchange, on the other hand, installed without a hitch and has continued to streamline our faxing process. With GFI FAXmaker, we save an annual average of USD 2,000 in administrative costs,” said John P. Hunter, P.E., IT/electrical director for South Valley Water Reclamation Facility in West Jordan, Utah.

The financial impact of this is significant. If the person sending a fax is paid a modest USD 25,000 per annum, the cost of sending just one fax is USD 2. If that person sends 25 faxes per day, that equates to USD 250 every week, or more notably, USD 13,000 a year.

GFI FAXmaker also offers Fax Over IP (FOIP) functionality enabling employees to send faxes over the Internet whilst easily integrating with the existing IP infrastructure. Faxes are sent out directly from the user’s desktop. Integrated network faxing is a very secure method of communicating important or confidential documents. As faxes are received in the user’s account, they are not left out in public view and are not prone to being discarded.

David Vella, Product Manager at GFI, comments: “The most common pain point for businesses using fax machines is that they are so slow and outdated. The time it takes to send a fax manually is actually very costly for companies when you consider all the individual steps involved. By using GFI’s integrated network fax product, GFI FAXmaker, employees can streamline the faxing process by managing the entire chain of communication from their desktop, therefore avoiding time wasted on paper jams and lost faxes.”

For further information, please go to http://www.gfi.com/whitepapers/network-fax-savings.pdf.

Pricing and availability
GFI FAXmaker is available from distributors around the world or online at the GFI website: http://www.gfi.com. It is highly cost-effective with prices starting at USD 695 to enable up to 10 computers; a version for up to 100 computers costs USD 2,495. For more information and to download the product, one can visit http://www.gfi.com/faxmaker/.

About GFI FAXmaker for Exchange/SMTP
GFI FAXmaker for Exchange/SMTP is a Windows-based network fax solution that offers email integrated faxing for Exchange Server and SMTP/POP3 server environments. Besides fax, GFI FAXmaker also offers send-and-receive SMS/text functionality. For Exchange Server users, GFI FAXmaker includes a native fax connector for Microsoft Exchange Server. For SMTP server users, GFI FAXmaker includes an SMTP fax gateway. Users can send and receive faxes and SMS messaging (texting) directly from Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Web access or other email client, making GFI FAXmaker easy to use and learn. GFI FAXmaker includes a multi-line fax server, inbound fax routing, print to fax driver for Windows, support for server-side conversion of office documents, and fax management features. For more info about this product and to download your free trial, please visit http://www.gfi.com/faxmaker.