Who needs to transfer files? Or better put who doesn’t?
It is a reality of commerce that files are moved and moved again by all participants in the business relationship. Developers process owners IT architects creative staff and even customers all need to deliver or receive files with integrity speed security and tolerable failure rates. With data increasing every day this file movement will only become more urgent and more extensive. File Transfer Protocol—the ubiquitous FTP—simply won’t do.
Last week IBM announced that it is bundling its managed file transfer options together and adding in monitoring capabilities. The joint offering Connect:Direct Advanced combines IBM Sterling Connect:Direct IBM WebSphere MQ Managed File Transfer Service and the Sterling Control Center Monitoring all for the price of one solution.
IBM’s Leif Davidsen Senior Product Manager discussed the combined assets of these technologies in a webcast on the Global WebSphere Community on March 13. The webcast “Minimize risk and reap optimal benefits with IBM MQ 7.5 now enhanced with comprehensive managed file transfer” became an examination of the intricacy of file transfer and the advantages that enterprises can gain from this package.
The challenges of file transfer demand that organizations consider security and operational cost. Burdened with risk time delays and the diversity of applications that exist within businesses transfers complicate every step of operations.
FTP is prevalent but limited Davidsen explained by unreliability a lack of flexibility and a lack of clarity. Transfers can fail due to operation time duration or file size. Users can be unsure if files transferred completely or at all.
As Davidsen said most businesses that move files use separate applications throughout the organization from sales to inventory or accounting to human resources. This heterogenous infrastructure increases overhead complexity and security and file integrity risk.
The three products enclosed in this Connect:Direct Advanced bundle offer businesses plenty of options to address the problems specific to their missions.
Using the power of WebSphere WebSphere MQ Managed File Transfer addresses and transfers files as messages. In moving these elements between infrastructural components over the MQ link users achieve operational savings by cutting administration costs and training expenses.
“There are real benefits to this message movement—using data embedded files in a more timely way” said Davidsen. “You can now skip that whole step of moving as a file. You can begin dealing with it immediately.”
Davidsen explained a use case involving a grocery retailer that needs to move files and data across over 2400 locations. The customer now uses a messaging backbone that deploys MQ to transport all messaging. The improvements have achieved gains in operational speed. Transaction data now reaches the warehouse in near real time—rather than daily.
As explained by Davidsen IBM Sterling Connect:Direct offers high volume reliable mission-critical data transfer. Users can achieve file-based movement both within their organization and externally to partner networks. File size is no problem for the product as it easily scales up as workload grows.
Based in South Korea Kookmin Bank turned to Sterling Connect:Direct for file transfer as they re-oriented their business mission from universal banking to private markets. “Their shifting business meant they needed to implement a shift toward a multi-specialist strategy of approaching the customer” said Davidsen.
The bank has specific data transfer requirements. It moves high volumes of large files so the solution must have no defined limits on file sizes. Kookmin also needs to meet regulatory and industry requirements. Connect:Direct achieves the committed file transfer the bank needs without manual operation and without concerns over security and process duration.
With Sterling Control Center Monitoring users can keep tabs on all aspects of transfer execution. They can manage WebSphere MQ MFT and Connect:Direct transfers through a central console achieving compliance reporting and mobile monitoring. The Control Center’s reporting capabilities offer analytics alerts and notifications giving a comprehensive view of the efficiency of the transfer process.
Read more about the announcement
here. Watch the replay
here.