Some time ago, I wrote about Accellion, a company that makes a secure file transfer appliance (SFTA). I just got notice that the company is shipping a new release of its software that allows you to transfer entire folders of files in one smooth transaction.
The purpose of an SFTA is to take the burden of attaching and sending files off of your email system. When you are in email and click on “attach,” the document or folder that you want to send gets posted to this appliance. The email recipient gets a URL where he can go download his document(s) at his convenience. I’ve used it and it is slick.
This does a couple of good things for you:
1) You save on network bandwidth because large files don’t get sent via email anymore.
2) You save on storage capacity because a file is only stored once on the appliance, even if you have lots of people in the TO, CC or BCC fields of the email.
3) You add a layer of security and auditability to the file, because there is a documented trail of who picked it up, and when.
This new folder feature in release 5.0 of Accellion Courier SFTA adds the capability of sending full folders of documents – complete with the sub-directory hierarchy – without using FTP.
Check out more at www.accellion.com, or read the blog put out by one of the executives at https://acaguy.blogspot.com/.
