The path of file transmission development in cloud environment

So far, email is still the main way for people to get information. But when a large number of large file delivery is required, the pressure on the email server can be immediately felt, leading to lower e-mail performance and network bandwidth tension.

This is one of the issues that the managed file Transfer (MFT) system has to address, which is designed for large file transfers within an enterprise, between businesses and customers, or between enterprise and application to applications, bypassing e-mail servers. e-mail Newsletter often use the MFT to send users the latest news or corporate promotions, and financial institutions often use the MFT to send a large number of files to customers and other business partners.

Managing all of these file transfers is a huge market: Gartner analyst Ben Huang estimates that the market totals between 700 million and 800 million dollars a year, but that only accounts for the recorded revenue, and other researchers estimate that the market will be more than $2 billion trillion.

The main providers of the MFT sector include IBM and Citrix, as well as emerging start-ups such as YouSendIt, targeting small businesses and consumer markets.

In terms of how file transfer is managed, there is a bigger and more compelling trend that businesses and users are trying to adapt to a new cloud computing world where file transfers will take place in the cloud, and cloud services will allow a broader range of capabilities than enterprise internal systems.

In the past few weeks, there has been a new trend in the field of file transfer management, with many vendors announcing plans to extend their platform to cover new cloud services, including Ipswich Fire transmits, the most obvious example, which offers a range of MFT products, Includes servers for the enterprise internal MFT. Last week, the company withdrew from Moveit, a fully cloud-based MFT.

"CIOs are under pressure to manage data," says Simon Yates, a Forrester researcher who works with CIOs on mobile and workplace technologies, saying, "More and more data is being generated and we need to provide the right way to share content securely with different users, and content synchronization in all devices used by employees. ”

Yates, who calls this mobile employee "anytime, anywhere," says 40% of information workers use three or more three devices for work, and more than One-third are already using consumer-facing cloud computing applications, such as Dropbox, Box, or icloud. These trends do not show signs of slowing, and they are accelerating, and the MFT is seen as one way to help manage mass data transfers between different devices.

Suppliers are looking for opportunities and time to use them. Gartner analyst Huang says the industry is now dominated by big-name suppliers. IBM's sterling is seen as a leader in the market, and other vendors include Tibco, Axway, Seeburger, Informatica, Sofrware AG and Citrix Sharefile.

There are many smaller or intermediate suppliers, many of whom have modified their products in recent weeks. These include (but are not limited to) YouSendIt, Ipswitch, GlobalSCAPE, CodeTwo and Kitepoint, and Accelion introduced a new product this week.

What is the biggest difference between these vendors? In general, smaller vendors may have cheaper services, and their services have only basic features and functionality. Larger vendors often have more comprehensive solutions, and traditional functionality can also be integrated into the system, which increases the price to a seven-digit range. With these additional features, you will add complexity and extend the sales and deployment process. Midrange and smaller vendors may have fewer moving parts, more logical and faster installations.

For example, IBM's sterling MFT bindings help enterprises automate and streamline operations in enterprise resource Planning (ERP) and business Process Management (BPM).

The MFT systems behind most enterprise firewalls run on traditional hardware and do not require a dedicated infrastructure, but they typically require servers with high memory and high processing capacity, because they are designed to handle a large amount of data transfer, while also having features such as compression and encryption. Some vendors, such as Ipswitch, have servers specifically designed for the enterprise's internal MFT, Huang recommends using dynamic storage arrays with extensions and comparisons based on specific file transfer requirements, as well as real-time backup or replication capabilities.

The ways in which these systems are in the backend architecture vary from vendor to provider. Some vendors offer policy-based systems with e-mail platforms, such as Microsoft Outlook: Any file transfer over 1MB or 2MB will be automatically delivered to the MFT to help ease the burden on the e-mail server. Other vendors provide systems that are fully manual or fully automated, and that users manually select which files will be transferred by the MFT, or that for automated programs, the user can be set up to transfer all applications to the application or to the machine to the MFT.

Businesses typically consider MFT systems when their mail servers are "overwhelmed" or if they need a large number of large file transfers, says Michael Osterman, an independent researcher in the field of communications and collaboration, "If an enterprise needs to send 2MB of information to 10,000 people, There will be a lot of information flowing through your network. "And if the MFT is used, the enterprise only needs to upload a copy to the MFT server and then send a linked message to the 10,000 people who can access the content on the MFT server via a link." As a result, the bandwidth consumption of these 10,000 readers does not occur at the same time, but is dispersed over a longer period of time, reducing the burden on the network.

Forrester researcher Yates says the IT department has a variety of tools on hand, including MFT, traditional email and next-generation collaboration tools (such as Salesforce's chatter, Jive, or Microsoft's Yammer). For CIOs, the key is to understand what their users are doing, and then try to manage their behavior by making policies or offering them alternatives. "The CIO's job is to deploy the right solution," Yates said, "CIOs need to choose the right infrastructure to meet the needs of all employees, whether they are mobile employees or in-house employees." ”