Accellion blog has moved!

You should be automatically redirected in 6 seconds. If not, visit
http://www.accellion.com/blog/
and update your bookmarks.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

What customers are saying about Accellion SFTA and a Happy 2007

Summary: What is driving the demand for Accellion secure file transfer appliance? What are the experiences for users and IT once SFTA is installed? These are snippets of what customers have told us.


-----

Secure File Transfer is an universal need for all industries and organizational sizes. So, as you get ready for 2007, check if any of these typical customer comments ring true and consider if there should be an Accellion SFTA on your 2007 to-get list.

(Okay. Okay. I admit it. ACA Guy's handler is out on vacation. So, I have turned to customers for content. As always, names have been withheld to protect the not always innocent.)


***

Ouch! We have to fix this.

A few weeks ago an employee set up an FTP account for company X. People at X turned around and gave a whole bunch of people outside of X access to the FTP account unbeknownst to us. As we were exchanging data and information through that FTP account, unauthorized people were getting confidential and competitive data that they shouldn’t have seen.

Global Advertising Agency


***

Because secure file transfer is important for our clients

We have many high profile clients and securing file transfer in a way that our attorneys can easily use is important for all transactions.

Global Law Firm


***

See the Gain (usage) Without the Pain (support calls)

I initially handed out access to a few people who were regularly sending 60MB PPT files and refusing to use anything other than email. Demand for access grew virally as new users hear about and ask for this new tool.

What closed the deal for me is that as user count "takes off", the user support hotline remains dormant.

Medical Research Foundation


***

Get your own SFTA!

[SFTA] is being used by ALL sorts of people - documentation, clinical, marketing and sales, field engineers. I am getting constant calls from people who want to have access to the system immediately.

While I will probably give access to other divisions on a limited basis, this box is for our division and they'll have to buy their own.

Medical Device Company


***

Happy Users = Happy IT

I used to get lots of complaints about ad hoc large file transfer from doctors. But, since its [Accellion SFTA] installation, I have gotten zero complaints.

Healthcare Institution


***

And, regardless of where you are on the secure file transfer readiness scale, the Best Wishes for a Joyful and Successful 2007 from the entire Accellion team.

ACA Guy

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Using Exchange/Outlook and Domino/Notes with Accellion Secure File Transfer Appliance

Summary: Offered as an integrated plug-in for Exchange/Outlook and Domino/Notes, Accellion SFTA allows users to send whatever size files without leaving the comfort of email. What does this mean for the IT Support Ticket count?

-----

Maybe you are like me. The very first thing and the very last thing I do in the office involves starting and closing my email client application.

And, between these two points, just about everything I do has an email component - requesting additional information, explaining the latest proposal, following up with people on their action items, and sending files as attachments.

The good news about a ubiquitous tool like email is that users, like yours truly, would happily take advantage of features like the ability to send file attachments. Conversely, the bad news is that if you force users to leave their email comfort zone for things like sending large files, say via FTP or CD/DVD, there will be confusion and a lot of IT support calls.

This is why Accellion has taken great care to develop the hooks necessary to integrate with the two most popular email solutions: Microsoft Exchange/Outlook and Lotus Domino/Notes. By using the Accellion email client plug-in, users can access the enterprise secure file transfer solution from within the productivity tool most intimate to the majority of business processes – the email system.

Once the Accellion plug-in has been installed on the email client, Accellion SFTA becomes a smart icon for the end users. (Click here to see an example of the how it appears on the end user's email client.) In other words, from a user’s perspective, there is no need to exit the email application or start another application to transfer a large file; it’s all streamlined. And the easier the process it is for the user, the fewer support tickets IT has to resolve.

Beyond the obvious end user process advantage, the email-integrated Accellion SFTA still works in parallel to the email system by offloading file attachments and managing the file life cycle through the policy-based mechanism. Namely, all the features that makes IT's life easy are there.

As best as I can tell, Accellion is the only company that offers this kind of Outlook and Lotus Notes email integration for an enterprise secure file transfer solution. And we bring a lot of integration experience to the table. While doing the setup is not a complicated process, it is good to know that Accellion can help you troubleshoot and resolve issues in hours instead of days, weeks, or longer.

What about when a user is out of his office, without access to his email? We’ve got it covered there, too. The secure file transfer appliance can be accessed via the web, so even when access to email is not available, you can still send files to your heart's content.

Sweet!

ACA Guy - YF Juan

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Supporting Global Multi-Office Secure File Transfer Needs - The Six Factors to Consider

Summary: Accellion has been deploying global multi-office secure file transfer solution for enterprise users for years. How does your need compare to some of our typical deployments? What are the issues to keep in mind when designing a global multi-office secure file transfer framework? Accellion's ACA Guy tells all.

-----

Question: Can Accellion Courier Secure File transfer Appliance (SFTA) solution scale to meet large enterprise demands on a global basis?

Answer 1: There are more than 13,000 registered users on a deployment consisting of 40% internal users and 60% external users worldwide for one Accellion customer.

Answer 2: The largest Accellion installation supports over 70 offices around the world with SFTA clusters and satellites as part of the customer's global network.

Answer 3: A global media company regularly exchanges more than one terabyte (1TB or 1,000 GB) of data every month and the usage is still growing.

While setting up an SFTA is just three easy steps away, it is equally true that Accellion SFTA has been designed as an enterprise solution that allows appliances to be linked together to provide a global secure file transfer infrastructure.

Being a highly scalable solution, you can start with one appliance to service your current needs. And, as the usage and company expands, just keep adding to the SFTA network to meet the new demands.

A second advantage is that, since Accellion has customers in North America, Europe, and Asia deploying SFTA on a global enterprise basis, we know as much about how to implement a global multi-office secure file transfer infrastructure as we know about what not to do.

***

So, what are the key considerations for a multi-office secure file transfer architectural framework? There are six.

1. Access Control: How to ensure and automate the process in which only authorized users can access the correct file/data.

2. Security: How to ensure file transfer security both technically, such as file encryption, and business process-wise, such as file tracking.

3. High Availability: How to ensure constant availability in light of potential hardware, location, and connectivity failures.

4. Storage Management: How to ensure efficient file storage to maximize system wide capacity.

5. Right Speed for Users: How to ensure timely file/data delivery without significant capital investment.

6. Ease of Enterprise Integration: How to make the secure file transfer process integrate with existing enterprise usage.

I won't inundate you with the whole eight pages worth of data and analysis. So, click here for the whitepaper on the six factors on how to implement a global multi-office secure file transfer infrastructure [registration required].

Whether your organization needs to support a handful of file transfer users or tens of thousands, Accellion can help you achieve it.

And, the best part of it, none of it has to hurt!

ACA Guy

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

What is the largest file attachment that you can send via Exchange and a few related incidents for the ACA Guy

Summary: Setting attachment size limit is the right thing. But, what is the biggest file that you can send via Exchange theoretically? And, see how ACA Guy sent a 6.5GB folder.

-----

There is no denying that Microsoft Exchange is a highly successful product. With more than 115 million seats (users) worldwide, this email solution has become an integral part of many organizations and it is difficult to fathom how business processes get completed without it today!

(And, in the interests of equal time, the same applies to Lotus Notes and GroupWise users.)

All the same, even a "killer app" like Exchange has its limitations, such as sending large file attachments. Exchange and its related desktop client products, Outlook and Outlook Web Access (OWA) all have limits on the size of files that can be sent and received.

In a prior discussion on MSFT Exchange/Outlook attachment size best practices, it was noted that, out of the box, the Exchange 2003 sets the default file size at 10MB. Email administrators can adjust these limits higher or lower. Setting higher file size limits allows end users to send or receive large files, but these higher limits can result in performance degradation of the overall system. And, from talking with email administrators, setting file size limits in the range of 5MB to 10MB seems sufficient for the majority of email users and business processes. Moreover, it helps to control email performance issues which impact the entire organization.

(So, why is ACA Guy so up to snuff on Exchange/Outlook? Many Accellion customers come for SFTA's ability to integrate with Exchange/Outlook so that large file transfer capability becomes a seamless process for their Outlook users. But, that is, as the saying goes, another story for another time.)

Looking at the size limit issue from the other side, for the sake of argument, what is the biggest file that an user can send under the Exchange/Outlook regime? For this, let's turn to the official MSFT Exchange team blog.

In the posting about Controlling attachment size in Exchange Server 2007 Outlook Web Access (OWA), Raj Mukherjee noted there is a default file size limit of 30 MB. Raj also provided instructions for email administrators who want to change that file size limit, and the instructions are, shall we say, non-trivial.

On the question of the hard limit, Raj discussed OWA's 60 minutes time out for file uploads and downloads which cannot be changed even by an email administrator.

So, it kind of got me thinking. Since one hour is a decent chunk of time, if you take the trouble to send a very large file, I cannot think of a worse fate than having the job abruptly terminated mid-session when the clock strikes the 61st minute.

Oh, beyond self-loathing from the terminated job, did I mention how you would also get the evil eyes from all the people whose email comes to a crawl because you attached large file in the email?

***

Afterthoughts

Never one to shirk from controversies, ACA Guy was drawn into a war of words in the comment section for the Exchange blog posting. It is a shame that "Mr/Ms Anonymous" left the party. Nevertheless, here is a Digg entry if you want to keep the flame alive.

Finally, for the record, ACA Guy's biggest file transfer job was a 6.5GB folder with one click through an Accellion SFTA box.

Just thought you would like to know.

ACA Guy