Stage Set for Cloud To Supercharge B2B Managed File Transfer, Survey Finds 
Enterprise IT may be poised to look closely at cloud-based managed file transfer options to supercharge simple file transfer, as increasing volumes of data need to be securely moved to customers and partners, a revealing study has found.
Enterprise IT may be poised to look closely at cloud-based managed file transfer options to supercharge simple file transfer, as increasing volumes of data need to be securely moved to customers and partners, a revealing study has found.
The survey polled 250 organizations ranging from 10,000 employees to less than 100, and looked at how companies use file transfer to work with their demand chains and ecommerce partners and customers -- and ways they would like to improve those interactions.
The survey was conducted by Hubspan, a cloud-based business integration provider.
One dramatic takeaway is that FTP, which has become today’s no-brainer way of moving files between departments, partners and even customers, simply cannot meet growing needs for secure and managed file transfers at low costs, Margaret Dawson, Hubspan’s vice president of product management, told Integration Developer News.
“Today file transfers require a lot more control, security and management and encompass a lot more than simple FTP,” Dawson said. “And, we heard in our survey, especially in the financial sector, that companies know pure FTP won’t address their security and governance issues.” Dawson said. “The survey findings also suggest mounting data volumes and security concerns may be poised to change IT’s thinking about new cloud-based ways to deliver file transfer.”
Among the survey’s other notable findings:
- More than three-fourths (77%) of respondents use a file transfer solution to exchange information with both internal and external communities. Of these, 66% do file transfer transactions every day.
- The top three greatest file transfer challenges as cited by survey respondents are: security (49%), file size (30%) and management (24%).
- FTP is the pervasive, primary file transfer technique (70%), but due to FTP’s lack of security and compliance it can leave companies vulnerable to data loss and regulatory issues.
Trends in Cloud-Based Managed File Transfer
The survey’s findings and trends are also married with IT’s increasing awareness of the benefits for using multiple transfer protocols, as respondents said they would prefer using SFTP, FTPS and HTTPS over FTP when given a choice.
Notably, the survey also found IT managers do have a lot of influence should they want to push for cloud-based managed file transfer options. IT controls (or approves) file transfer in more than 70 % of companies, the survey said.
“For file transfers, there is a lot of focus on real-time message exchange and the ability to support very large files with security, compliance and access controls."
Margaret Dawson
V.P Product Management
Hubspan
In part, this involvement by IT is because companies use file transfer for a lot more than dropping a fat file onto DropBox or YouSendIt, Dawson explained.
“For file transfers, especially on the B2B side, there is a lot of focus on real-time message exchange, and the ability to support very large files with security, compliance, access controls and even end-to-end business rules and so on,” Dawson said. “Those kinds of needs are well suited to today’s environment, where SOA, cloud and governance can be used to support and manage transfers beyond the firewall.”
Hubspan’s vision of cloud-based managed file transfer aims to deliver what Dawson called “the capability to support multi-enterprise business process integration.”
Dawson said Hubspan’s cloud-based platform can be architected to enable a full range of format and protocol interoperability and message exchanges between multiple companies – not simply point-to-point between two companies, or a point-and-dump approach such as popular low-cost SaaS-based file transfer solutions.
“We have companies that use multiple approaches within one managed environment, such as FTP, HTTP, Rosettanet and others and provide real-time messaging for multiple partners,” Dawson said. “The key is to allow employees and partners to meet their transfer needs from within a single environment.”
One key concern is the need to balance increased managed file transfer capabilities with the low-cost and ease-of-use of FTP. Hubspan’s cloud-enabled, unified end-to-end environment provides integration and management capabilities to help IT achieve this balance, she added.
