FTP is Free But can you Really Afford It?

White Paper
FTP Is Free, But
Can You Really Afford It?
A Closer Look at the Total Cost of Operation of Freeware FTPFTP Is Free, But Can You Really Afford It? 
Introduction
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a widely used data-movement standard. It provides an unsophisticated and straightforward way to move files to and from remote platforms. Its simplicity of operation, however, comes with a price. This paper examines the hidden costs that result from extended FTP use for critical, production-level data movement.
Large networks are inherently unreliable due to their expanse and complexity. With extended use, the probability of failure increases in proportion to the amount of information that is transmitted. The distributed nature of the Internet, however, tends to hide the overall impact and cost of failures. The decentralized management, security, and performance of the data movement operation generally masks the costs associated with interruptions, rework and security failures. Yet these hidden costs can be exposed dramatically when network failures result in missed processing windows or service levels. Unmanaged use of FTP represents an intolerable risk to the value of the network infrastructure. Companies and organizations that understand the importance of on-time, predictable and secure data movement select products that fit their performance, management and security requirements.
The Sterling Commerce Connect:® product line provides the management capability, auditing features, security enforcement and workload balancing that organizations need to address the inherent complexity and unreliability of networks. The temptation to compare software license costs with free or low-cost FTP acquisition is fallacious, since this represents but a small fraction of the overall cost of operation for FTP. Connect: products have the ability to enforce security, balance the use of network resources, and automatically recover from the interruptions that invariably occur. FTP, by comparison, does none of these. A careful evaluation of the relative ability of Connect: and FTP to ensure the timely and reliable delivery of critical business information strongly favors the use of Connect: . Many businesses have made the same calculations in favor in Connect: products. Today, the Sterling Commerce flagship product, Connect:Direct®, runs on over 45,000 servers - protecting bank deposits, credit reports and many other mission-critical business documents.
©2005. Sterling Commerce, Inc. FTP Is Free, But Can You Really Afford It?
Consistent Management of Data Movement Operation and Use of Network ResourcesAs data movement grows within and between enterprises, it is becoming more important to effectively manage the data transmission operations according to business priorities. Unmanaged data movement can result in unproductive utilization of network resources. In catastrophic cases, unimportant or duplicate bulk data movement can impact critical data delivery.
Inability to prioritize and control use based on business policies threatens the data movement infrastructure. FTP provides no way to control critical data movement or balance it against lower-priority work that can impact processing windows. Massive, unmanaged data movement can delay and slow critical deliveries. FTP places all control in the hands of the client, and the first job usually wins. FTP also lacks the ability to create an enforceable policy for workload execution. Over time, this frequently results in chaos.
Connect: gives each process a work-queue priority and a session class. Priorities are used to determine when processes run, and session classes are used to reserve transmission channels for critical transfers. These can be set up and enforced in accordance with business requirements. Users' requests are always accepted, but the actual operation of the request is scheduled according to the business policy that drives the priority and class structure.
This accomplishes the goals of the user as well as those of the business. Without queuing, scheduling and management capabilities, it is impossible to control the data movement workload.
In addition, these capabilities give the enterprise a way to manage work when exceptions or high-priority work suddenly occur. The data-movement workload can be suspended, re-prioritized and restarted dynamically. This allows for continuous... [download for more]