Welcome

Communication has transformed our world. It has also made the world a smaller place. Over time, this has been a radical shift from slow, direct, physical communication to rapid, digital networks. Today, it's easily possible to send a message right now to someone almost anywhere in the world – and expect them to read and respond almost instantaneously. As organizations depend on this flow of information, so the delivery mechanisms become more important – and will continue to gain power. In particular, it is cloud services that help companies by making tried and tested communication channels highly available, integrating them seamlessly into digital processes. Professionally set up global delivery networks protect against the disruption of business-critical communication, which can prove sensitive and cost-intensive for enterprise businesses.

We are entering the era of the cloud – where everything is connected. Today, companies are compelled to react to new market conditions more quickly and flexibly than ever, and through an increasing variety of communication channels – relying on a combination of established and emerging technologies. We also still send each other physical documents, pieces of paper via mail – as well as copies of them as faxes. Despite the growing clamor of calls for innovation, it's important not to neglect existing channels in the transition to the digital age. Those channels remain as a bastion of an older age – because of their renown in security, compliance, and reliability. In particular, they are still indispensable since the data is either available only in an unstructured form or involves a person in the communication chain.

In today's almost exclusively IP-based global communication networks, our customers have decided to take a more strategic view, concentrating on impacted business processes. When you absolutely need to make sure the message gets through, you'll likely still send an SMS instead of an email – because you know it's the most robust and that delivery is guaranteed. The same applies to digital documents – where compliance and regulation come in to play, not to mention global standardization and tough quality requirements. Against this, organizations are still relying on a lesser vaunted technology, the humble fax – although it's no longer restricted to a sheet of heat-sensitive paper rolling out of a machine.

The fax has grown up and become a reliable, universally-accepted standard for the transfer of written information. At Retarus, we appreciate that businesses want to move with the times, but would also prefer to hang on to some of their more robust, tried and tested technology – especially when replacement options are less reliable and more expensive. We've learned from our customers that companies won't get into large migration projects and switch to new technologies without stabilizing their existing operations and infrastructure first. The fax may not be fashionable but it's certainly still valuable: As a global service provider, we're focusing on helping our customers to get the best of both worlds by helping them to combine the strengths of compliance and security that are watchwords for older technology with the increased efficiency of the modern world.

Martin Hager, CEO at the Retarus Group