File transfer solutions take pressure off e-mail

The CIO-level business angle on the latest tech

If there’s one true “killer app,” it has to be e-mail. Everyone uses it for business communications as well as casual conversations. We love e-mail so much that we might be killing it with overuse. Or, make that misuse.

Sometimes we ask our enterprise e-mail applications to do things they weren’t designed to do -- like sending very large files from one person to another. By large, I mean anything over 20MBs, as that seems to be a common file size limit that many e-mail administrators set to prevent their system from getting overloaded and overwhelmed. The problem is, files just keep getting larger, and 20MBs is barely enough to accommodate your average graphics-laden PowerPoint slide deck these days.

There are several enterprise-class file transfer solutions on the market that are aimed at taking the pressure off your e-mail system for sending and receiving files that can range up to several gigabytes in size. To keep your users from turning to non-secure consumer-class file transfer applications, it’s time to investigate a secure file transfer solution.

Let me first make the distinction between “enterprise” and “consumer” tools for sending large files. Enterprise products are specifically built for business use. They include good security features, such as encryption, virus-checking and SSL. They have features like audit trails and private access to files in order to meet business regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. They integrate with enterprise e-mail systems like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes and with directory systems like Active Directory and LDAP. They ensure complete receipt and delivery of files in the event of an interruption in transmission. In short, enterprise-level file transfer products are designed to protect your critical business information.

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If there’s one true “killer app,” it has to be e-mail. Everyone uses it for business communications as well as casual conversations. We love e-mail so much that we might be killing it with overuse. Or, make that misuse.

Sometimes we ask our enterprise e-mail applications to do things they weren’t designed to do -- like sending very large files from one person to another. By large, I mean anything over 20MBs, as that seems to be a common file size limit that many e-mail administrators set to prevent their system from getting overloaded and overwhelmed. The problem is, files just keep getting larger, and 20MBs is barely enough to accommodate your average graphics-laden PowerPoint slide deck these days.

There are several enterprise-class file transfer solutions on the market that are aimed at taking the pressure off your e-mail system for sending and receiving files that can range up to several gigabytes in size. To keep your users from turning to non-secure consumer-class file transfer applications, it’s time to investigate a secure file transfer solution.

Let me first make the distinction between “enterprise” and “consumer” tools for sending large files. Enterprise products are specifically built for business use. They include good security features, such as encryption, virus-checking and SSL. They have features like audit trails and private access to files in order to meet business regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. They integrate with enterprise e-mail systems like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes and with directory systems like Active Directory and LDAP. They ensure complete receipt and delivery of files in the event of an interruption in transmission. In short, enterprise-level file transfer products are designed to protect your critical business information.

Products that I’d place in the enterprise category include Accellion Secure File Transfer appliance; Biscom Delivery Server; Tumbleweed Secure Transport; Axway Synchrony Transfer; and LeapFILE hosted solution.

Many of the consumer file transfer products, on the other hand, are just concerned with moving bits from one person to another. Those bits might travel on an unsecured peer-to-peer network or be stored on a file server over which you have no control. That’s OK for your vacation photographs, but definitely not OK for the draft of your quarterly financial statement or for private medical records.

Products that fall into the consumer-oriented category include YouSendIt, Pando, BitTorrent, and SendThisFile. To some degree, I’d also include consumer-grade e-mail systems like Gmail and Yahoo Mail in this category, since they can handle larger files that often are prohibited from moving through Microsoft Exchange systems. Because of an inherent lack of security, your user community should be discouraged (if not outright forbidden) from using these tools to send business files.

Of all the enterprise-class solutions, I am most familiar with those from Accellion and Biscom, which are actually quite similar. Both are designed to act as an integrated complement to your e-mail system, or to operate stand-alone as a Web-based file transfer tool. Accellion sells its solution as a plug-and-play appliance, while Biscom is a software-only product. Both tools are very easy to use and to administer.

Linda Musthaler is a principal analyst with Essential Solutions Corporation.