How extensively does your enterprise use fax among internal points? In some industries, such as health care, this can be a surprising amount of your traffic. I have seen 30 percent to 40 percent fax traffic among the offices of a multicenter health system.

When you look at your fax usage, also consider overnight delivery and courier usage and whether any can be replaced by quality fax. Remember that some documents, such as legal forms, must still be handled in physical form.

Analog fax traffic is more delay-tolerant than analog voice and can be a perfect candidate to start your VOIP deployment. Fax machines look like telephones to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and plug into telephone-oriented interfaces on routers or private branch exchanges (PBX).

Look carefully at the applications or fax machines that generate the traffic, and you may soon find that a good many transmissions could be deferred until your links are largely idle. Effective management of nonurgent fax can even reduce the need for costly telephone links.

Stay conventional?