The Bristol Group today announced the release of MacClient, a network fax client for Macintosh. MacClient uses a simple print-to-fax interface making faxing available from any Macintosh application.

MacClient combines with the IsoFax server to provide network faxing that is scalable from workgroups to an enterprise solution. Using the TCP/IP protocol standard MacClients communicate with IsoFax servers running on NT, Sun, Hewlett Packard, and IBM. The client server architecture minimizes the load on any machine on the network, makes the system simple to administer, and offers maximum installation flexibility.

MacClient includes a phone book for selecting fax recipients, distribution lists for faxing to multiple recipients, scheduling, automatic generation of cover sheets, customized cover sheets, viewing of received faxes, and previewing of faxes prior to sending.

"IsoFax now offers graphical interfaces for all major desktop platforms, Mac, Windows, Windows '95, NT, Sun, HP, and IBM," said Pete Harris, President of the Bristol Group. "Companies can centralize faxing on the server of their choice, and offer full graphical feature sets to all of their users."

MacClient is concurrent (floating) licensed and can share from the same license pool as Unix users. This simplifies license administration and centralizes tracking of license usage, enabling companies to determine when additional floating licenses are required. Pooling licenses also spreads the cost of licenses, making them extremely economical for the occasional user.

MacClients share the advantages of centralized fax servers which take responsibility for sending and receiving faxes. Composed faxes are delivered to the server, freeing user machines. Efficiency features minimize the cost of faxing. Intelligent resending of faxes re-transmits only the failed pages of a fax. If a failed fax call is identified as being placed to a non-fax device the fax is not re-transmitted and the failure mode is logged.

IsoFax also supports specialized efficiency features such as least cost routing. Companies with geographically placed servers can route faxes over high speed connections such as the Internet or T1 lines for faxing locally at lower rates.

Received faxes are delivered over the network for viewing, making them available even if the user machine is switched off. Received faxes can be printed to local network printers and archived for easy retrieval or forwarding.