No More FTP - Secure File Transfer for The Rest of Us

No More FTP -
Secure File Transfer Appliance for ad hoc, compliant, and low IT burden file transfers An Accellion White Paper

Accellion, Inc.1900 EmbarcaderoRoad Suite 207Palo Alto, CA 94303T: 650.739.0095F: 650.739.0561info@accellion.com www.accellion.comAccellion White Paper: No More FTP - Secure File Transfer Appliance
Executive Summary Today's business environment requires ad hoc and instantaneous sharing of information. Driven by new applications that create massive amounts of data as well as globalization, FTP and CD sending systems for sending large files have not kept up with the business need. do not meet the Existing solutions for sending large files fall short in several regards: E-mail does not stringent tracking and handle large files (even just 10MB) efficiently and FTP is too difficult to manage, audibility requirements of businesses administer and use. End users often resort to time-consuming workarounds such as processes that must burning CDs and sending them via overnight mail. comply with More seriously, FTP and CD sending do not meet the stringent tracking and audibility government mandates. requirements of businesses processes that must comply with government mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 and 21 CFR Part 11. A new solution, a Secure File Transfer Appliance, has been developed to provide a compliant, easy to use and easy to manage system to send large files. Companies who use it have eliminated FTP servers, improved the performance of e-mail, reduced storage requirements, and created compliant business processes.
© 2005 Accellion, Inc. T: 650.739.0095 info@accellion.com www.accellion.com Page 1 Accellion White Paper: No More FTP - Secure File Transfer Appliance
The Continuing Challenge and Need of Sending Large Files Today's business environment is changing more rapidly than ever before. Globalization and increased competition are driving new business models and collaboration needs. For example, outsourcing is creating new demands to synchronize business processes across companies and increase the sharing of information. Another example is the always on, Most companies need distributed company that has to make faster decisions, which requires more information to move at electronic to be available and shared more broadly. Business users are demanding new tools for speed and have turned to a very unlikely tool instantaneous ad hoc communication and data transfer. to send their data: FTP Information and how we share it has evolved as well. Five years ago, most people would use e-mail to share spreadsheets and Power Point presentations. For other data sharing, they typically relied on custom systems. Today, presentations and spreadsheets are much bigger and are used much more broadly. In addition, application files and sometimes even whole databases are regularly shared as part of new business processes. Examples of large files that are routinely sent today range from closing documents for complex financial transactions, design documents for engineering firms, research databases for pharmaceutical companies, and video files for advertising and media firms. Many of these files are so big that e-mail cannot be used to deliver them. Finally, many business processes have changed so rapidly that the supporting IT systems are out of sync with the businesses they support. While people used to rely on corporate systems to integrate a company, we are now seeing much more data being shared outside the formal IT systems, using alternative or non-standard solutions. While some organizations have resorted to more cumbersome and costly solutions, such as CD burning and overnight mail, most companies need to move at electronic speed and have turned to a very unlikely tool to send their data: FTP. Why FTP Falls Short For Today's Business Requirements
FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, was one of the first protocols generated by the early Internet back in 1973. FTP was developed so that people could share files between computers on the Internet. It was designed by programmers to share files with other programmers with the usage metaphor of manually copying files through a command line FTP falls short as a interface. It rapidly became a ubiquitous programmer tool but it is very unlikely that it scalable business application in several would ever have become a business tool had there... [download for more]