Controlling Costs, Improving Compliance, and Streamlining Integration with
Managed File Transfer

A Realtime Publishers Essentials Series

By Dan Sullivan
Sponsored by Attachmate

Data is constantly moving through organizations to business partners and into the cloud. Businesses depend on file transfer methods for day-to-day operations as well as for longer-term planning and analysis. Although file transfers might sound like simple operations, they are not. Network connections fail, data packets are dropped, disks become full, and, perhaps worst of all, ad hoc scripts might not provide adequate error handling and reporting to help you troubleshoot such problems.

In this series of three articles, written by Dan Sullivan, you’ll learn how managed file transfer can help you:

• Cut file transfer costs and support more efficient, reliable transfers.
• Facilitate regulatory compliance while controlling costs.
• Improve application integration with checks and controls.  

For instant access to all 3 articles, please complete the short form below. Your contact information will be kept confidential.

Excerpts from Controlling Costs, Improving Compliance, and Streamlining Integration with Managed File Transfer

Article 1: File Transfers Cost You More Than You Realize—What to Do About It

Moving data between applications is so common that it is easy to underestimate its actual costs. After all, how much can it cost to copy a few files? Actually, it’s potentially quite expensive and challenging, especially considering the scope of file transfer requirements across an enterprise. To gain insights into these challenges, think about a few issues related to enterprise file transfer:

• Common file transfer methods, and why they are inefficient and costly
• Keys to controlling file transfer costs
• Cost benefits of managed file transfer

Let’s begin with fairly common characteristics of file transfer solutions

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Article 2 - Managing File Transfer and Improving Compliance

Complying with regulations is a necessary part of business operations. Managing file transfers is also a necessary part of business operations. Not surprisingly, these two requirements intersect. In order to comply with regulations in an efficient manner, you have to understand different aspects of file transfer:

• The role of file transfers in compliance
• Efficient ways for managing file transfers
• Advantages of using a company‐wide file transfer solution

The objective is to understand how you can leverage a managed file transfer solution to improve compliance while controlling costs associated with compliance.

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Article 3 - Improving Application Integration with Managed File Transfer

There are many types of processes in a typical IT operation. Data is collected, analyzed, and reported. Transactions are recorded. Workflows move data through well‐defined steps of business processes. One common aspect of all these operations is the need for data exchange to implement application integration. In many cases, this exchange will depend on file transfers. How you design and implement these file transfers can significantly impact the cost and effectiveness of business operations. It can also affect the types of applications and workflows you can implement.

Managed file transfer is a set of practices and applications that enable a reliable, consistent, and secure exchange of files in ways that meet the needs of a wide variety of business requirements. To understand the impact of managed file transfer on application integration, it helps to understand:

• How application integration enables business innovation
• Challenges to application integration
• Methods for streamlining integration with managed file transfer

There are many business drivers to adopting managed file transfer solutions, such as cost control and compliance. However, you should not underestimate the value of managed file transfer to enabling business innovation.

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The Benefits of Managed File Transfer

File transfers are more costly and time consuming than they might first appear. Developing custom ad hoc solutions often appears to be the fastest most efficient way to address file transfer requirements. But over the long term, this may not hold true. The cost of debugging scripts, babysitting unreliable methods, and compensating for traditional file transfer shortfalls highlight the need for a more reliable, comprehensive approach to file transfers.

Attachmate FileXpress addresses the problems with ad hoc file transfer methods, all highlighted in the Essentials Series articles. In addition to protecting sensitive data, FileXpress supports: 

• Efficient, cost-effective file transfers
  Built-in FileXpress capabilities handle event-driven transfers via hotfolders, file integrity checking, and automatic retries. FileXpress even initiates the processing of files after they are successfully transferred. You get all the benefits of automation, minus all the costly, time-consuming burdens of custom ad hoc solutions.
• Internal and external security mandates
  FileXpress provides comprehensive support for the latest authentication, authorization, and encryption technologies, along with detailed auditing of all file transfer activity, to help facilitate regulatory compliance.
• Reliable data exchange
  Capabilities such as automated retries, packet-level data integrity checks, exception alerts, and file transfer queuing  provide the reliability needed to detect problems, notify senders, and recover transfers when transmissions fail—capabilities critical to successful application integration.

Attachmate FileXpress helps IT organizations that want to maintain a reliable data infrastructure, balance data security with business efficiency, and respond quickly to new business initiatives. With FileXpress providing secure and managed file transfer services, your organization will be able to protect its business data supply lines, leverage data security to improve efficiency, and quickly build supportable file transfer capabilities into your custom applications.

Learn more about Attachmate FileXpress