Info-Tech Research Group Inc., a London, Ont.-based IT consultant firm, has come out with its list of top winners in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) market, naming a host of businesses that have created the best solution for transferring files securely.
Unlike File Transfer Protocol (FTP), which allows a host to transfer files to clients requesting them, businesses now perceive MFT to be a secure option to manage file sharing securely inside and outside the business firewall. While many businesses talk about putting their data in the cloud, many of them are still concerned about security issues, and still others are waiting to hear when they can see mobile capabilities for their data.
Given these are the hot-button issues in MFT and cloud, Info-Tech evaluated 11 competitors offering MFT and named a few high performers, in a report.
Seeburger Inc., Axway Inc., Ipswitch Inc., and Globalscape Inc. were named champions, while Coviant Software Corp. won a Value Award for offering customers a full-bodied yet affordable solution. Yet Attunity Ltd. took home the most interesting honour, netting the Trend Setter Award for being a “pioneer” in connecting cloud and big data within MFT.
Info-Tech lauded Attunity for acquiring RepliWeb Inc. in 2011. The company was well-known for MFT, enterprise file replication, and application release automation. It also got kudos for building CloudBeam and the Hadoop File System, which it called “innovative” for allowing businesses to securely move large volumes of data to and from the cloud.
However, Info-Tech did offer some criticism of Attunity. It noted the company was innovative, but it still needs to develop a hosted, cloud-based, shared MFT services offering. Plus, Attunity’s MFT Server and DMZ Server both run on Windows, but that could prove to be a flaw if Attunity wants to reach out to other companies that may want more flexibility.
To name its winners, Info-Tech used a set of criteria touching on features, usability, affordability, and architecture for the product, while it judged vendors by their viability, strategy, reach, and their strategy within the channel.