The Office Fax Machine Is Alive and Well

From smartphones to tablets to big data, CIOs are being hit from all sides by technologies that are state of the art today and may be outdated tomorrow. Planned obsolescence is a key component in the success of technology products, and CIOs must accept the fact that some technologies will go the way of the Dodo long before they might like. But through it all, one old technology has found a way to hang tough in the enterprise. Tucked neatly in a corner far away from the smartphones and tablets and Macs, a fax machine sits in virtually every office. Though it might seem outdated, faxing is still among the most used methods of business communication. Against all odds, fax has found a way to stay relevant, even when most of us never think about it as a key component in the corporate world's technology mix. In a new study of 1,008 office workers, GFI Software, a company that specializes in Web and mail security, analyzed the importance of faxing in the corporate world. The following slides detail some key points.