October 1st, 2008
Accellion Secure File Transfer
Paula Skokowski, VP of Marketing for Accellion, and I had a lovely debate, err, conversation over the need for her company’s product, a file transfer “virtualization” product. In the end, she won me over and I was forced through gritted teeth to agree that Accellion’s managed file transfer solution could be very useful for medium to large organizations. In quite a number of circumstances it does make sence to “centralize” large file transfers rather than having workers send large files as attachments to Email messages.
Competing approaches
The debate, err conversation, centered on whether transferring files around the organization was the right approach. Wouldn’t it be better I suggested to store documents, presentation decks, spreadsheets, personal database files, photos and the like in a central information storage facility (infostore) and provide access to those files rather than sending huge files through an organization’s network to each and every recipient of a message?
Having spent time as Open-Xchange’s executive VP of corporate and marketing strategy, I was fond of an approach that was a central part of Open-Xchange. That is a central, secure, controlled “infostore” rather than copying files about the organization. This way, what’s sent in an Email message is a very small pointer to a storage resource. If the recipient wishes to look at the file, they would have to have the appropriate access privileges.
The Infostore could also log who has changed the file, prevent multiple people from updating the file at the same time and allow the organization to go back to any previous version. An additional benefit was simplicity. a staff member could attach a pointer to a message and know that only the intended recepients could access the information in the file stored in infostore even if the message containing the pointer were to be forwarded to unauthorized individuals.
After a delightful debate, I was persuaded that there was a place for transfering these files through an appliance rather than using a central store house.
Here’s what Accellion’s Secure File Tranfer Appliance does
Here’s how Accellion describes their solution:
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Daniel Kusnetzky is a member of the senior management team of The 451 Group. He is responsible for research and publications on a broad array of technology topics. He examines emerging technology trends, vendor strategies, research and development issues, and end-user integration requirements. You can follow Dan on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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