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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Best of Both Worlds: How to Get Deep Domain Expertise Inside Your Own Infrastructure

Summary: A Gartner analyst describes an appliance as getting an outsource model inside your own infrastructure. This means you get the deep domain knowledge and best practice while controlling your own destiny.

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"What is an IT appliance?" my mom would ask me. Well, it is like a toaster. If I have to hold a piece of bread to the open flame to get breakfast ready, chances are, I cannot get insurance on my house for long. With a toaster, I plug it in, set the level once, insert the bread, and nobody would yell at me for burning down the house (until I spill coffee into the toaster). In the context of the secure file transfer (IT) appliance from Accellion, you plug it, configure it once, and end users get off your back (unless you spill coffee on it).

While a perfectly good working definition, today I just heard a much more eloquent definition of an IT appliance. This comes from a discussion I with a Gartner analyst who noted that an IT appliance is an outsourced product that resides in your infrastructure.

We’ll start with the concept of outsourcing – the practice of acquiring goods or services from an outside vendor because it requires a level of expertise that is difficult to accumulate and manage internally. An example that I can speak with some authority about, since I have gone through many, is PR agencies. The beauty of the outsource model is that the provider is focused on doing the job well in order to acquire and maintain its clients. From the buyer's/user's perspective, this means that I do not have to build up and maintain domain expertise that does not exist in my organization and, thus, the outsourcing frees up resources and enhances flexibility of the organization.

Now put this into the concept of an appliance like the Accellion secure file transfer appliance. A company comes to Accellion mainly because of our expertise on how to transfer large files securely from a sender to a recipient within the enterprise context. While getting a file from person A to person B is a simple need at its core, the enterprise requirements on issues such as administration, life-cycle management, access control, and compliance/audit often require a level of expertise and experience uncommon in most organizations.

What makes the Accellion solution unique, however, is that we have put the solution in the appliance form factor. Namely, in the Gartner analyst’s words, it allows you to put this bundle of secure file transfer services (at the same level as you could have gotten from a outsourced provider with dedicated capabilities) inside your infrastructure.

This is a critically important part of the definition. It means that you, the buyer/user, have total control over this service. You are not at the mercy of another company’s policies or someone else’s infrastructure. You know how the product is deployed, and who uses it and when. You set the policies and parameters that safeguard your company’s assets (i.e., your files). You control your own destiny.

In short, an appliance allows you to access all the deep domain expertise of an outsourced model while retaining full control over your own infrastructure and usage. For enterprise IT use, this does not get any better.

So, the next time you think of an IT appliance as a simple plug-and-play box that has a specific purpose, remember also that it comes with a vast amount of technical expertise at your fingertips and under your control. For Mom, however, I will stick with the toaster example.

By the way, you can get more information about how easy it is to deploy an Accellion appliance by reading 3 Easy Steps to Secure File Transfer Nirvana – a.k.a., Why IT and end users love appliance solutions.


ACA Guy


Accellion in the News


Media Coverage



Accellion Solves CRA International's Large File Transfer Issues




How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell




Press Releases


* Red Dot Building Systems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution to Meet its Large File Transfer Needs

* Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Bad advice from the Wall Street Journal - How many ways can you say SOX, HIPAA, FRCP violations?

Summary: A Wall Street Journal article suggests that business users can circumvent corporate email system limitations by forwarding business correspondence to consumer-oriented email services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail. How many ways can you say SOX, HIPAA, FRCP violations?

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A recent Wall Street Journal article by columnist Lee Gomes discussed the “Internet boundlessness” of consumer email systems like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail from Yahoo! Inc. The context of the article was Yahoo!’s recent announcement of “free unlimited storage” for Yahoo Mail users.

Ordinarily, none of this should have any affect whatsoever on corporate email usage. But the WSJ article is suggesting that business users take note of the vast storage capabilities of the consumer email services and store attachments related to corporate uses there. The article claims that:

One of the ironies of the current tech scene is that the free email services available from the big Web companies are often faster and have more storage than the corporate accounts that office stiffs use in their jobs every day. It’s thus now common for people to forward work email to an outside free account, turning it into a permanent archive that’s always available for quick searching.

As a matter of a fact, Mr. Gomes proclaimed that he has no less than 40,000 messages stored in this Yahoo email account in about two years.

BIG GULP!!

Personally, I am an enthusiastic user of consumer email accounts like Yahoo Mail and Gmail. They serve their purpose and (my) world is better as a result.

But, in the era of SOX, HIPAA, and FRCP where there are severe financial and legal consequences when corporate data is mishandled, this article is suggesting that business people violate their corporate security policies and send proprietary communication outside the corporate firewall.

As the saying goes, I may be crazy but I ain't stupid.

Using consumer oriented technology to solve the problem of transferring large files and attachments in the corporate context is really substituting a completely separate and potential much larger can of worms for a small problem. For example, Gmail crawls the content of the mail in order to serve advertisements that match the content - Gmail probably know more about the content than you do. Where is your confidentiality and data security?

For companies seeking an alternative to sending and receiving large attachments in this email-centric world that we live in, Accellion secure file transfer solution solves the problem cleanly for the end users while satisfying all the corporate security and compliance requirements.

The Accellion solution is a secure appliance that integrates into your company’s IT infrastructure, and is controlled by your own IT department. The appliance allows employees to send and receive attachments of any size. (OK, 20 Gigabytes is the amount that we have tested so far, but at 5 DVDs worth of data in one click, our testers got tired!) On top of the large file capability, it comes with features like automated file life-cycle management, role-based authentication levels, and integration with corporate assets such as directory services. You know, a real enterprise solution from any angle that you look at it.

Mr. Gomes, let's talk. If you cannot send large attachments through your wsj.com business email account, I have the right solution for you!

ACA Guy


Accellion in the News


Media Coverage



Accellion Solves CRA International's Large File Transfer Issues




How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell




Press Releases


* Red Dot Building Systems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution to Meet its Large File Transfer Needs

* Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell - Accellion Leads the Way

Summary: CIO Magazine featured a story on how Accellion helps a financial services company escape the large attachment trap and turn its Accellion investment into a competitive advantage.

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Laurianne McLaughlin the CIO magazine technology editor for “Essential Technology” wrote a story about “How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell.” There are plenty of good lessons here for every CIO to take to heart, no matter what business you’re in.

The CIO in question is Fred Danback of Integro Insurance Brokers. Mr. Danback’s enterprise email system was creaking under the weight of large attachments. His IT team was dealing with bloated email servers, slow system response times, and message delivery failures.

He tried to address the problem by asking employees to forgo attaching large files to their email messages. His “pretty please” plea didn’t work, largely because the business was dependent on employees being able to exchange large files among themselves and also with partners and clients outside the company. Preventing the large attachments clearly wasn’t a solution; he had to find a way to get the files to the people who needed them, while at the same time taming the email issues. If he didn’t resolve the problem, Integro was at high risk of losing business with its blue-chip clients.

The article noted that Integro's e-mail system, supporting some 400 users in five countries, was groaning under weighty attachments. "There's a lot of document transfer that takes place. We may get CAD drawings, MPEG files, technical specifications, it runs the gamut," Danback says. Not only was his internal system being taxed, but also, his users were bumping up against problems with clients receiving their messages, since many firms limit attachment sizes to prevent problems like denial-of-service attacks, Danback says.

Alas, these problems are universal for almost any kind of business today.

Of course, by now you are guessing how Mr. Danback and Integro solved their problems. Yes, they installed an Accellion secure file transfer appliance. For just a few thousand dollars, the appliance immediately eliminated the email system's burden of transporting large files. And because the appliance integrates with the email system, the users didn’t have to learn a new process to use their new tool.

Maybe even more important to Integro is that this new method for getting files from person to person is giving the company a competitive advantage. Ms. McLaughlin tells it like this: Danback's business users like it for another reason. Because their insurance industry competitors are dealing with the same large documents and e-mail woes, anything Integro brokers can do to make their interactions with clients more seamless can only help them win business, Danback says. "We had to find a way to differentiate ourselves from our competitors."

The moral of the story for CIOs feeling the pressure of large attachments, sagging email systems and growing business needs? I couldn’t have said it any better than Ms. McLaughlin and Mr. Danback:

The more attachment-heavy your company is, the more an appliance [like Accellion's] makes sense in terms of ROI. If you have complex discovery and compliance needs, you will want to consider using an appliance in concert with e-mail archival software. Both of these product categories are growing, with good reason: Another recent Osterman Research study found that 59 percent of enterprises call messaging storage growth a serious problem. And messaging storage needs are growing at a clip of about 35 percent per year, according to Michael Osterman, principal of Osterman Research.

What's Danback's advice to other CIOs about e-mail appliances? "Look at what could go wrong with your e-mail and do something about it now. So you don’t get yourself in a situation where you have proprietary or secret information in the public mail," he says.

ACA Guy


Accellion in the News


Media Coverage




How One CIO Escaped E-Mail Attachment Hell



File transfer security the easy way



Press Releases


* Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

* Accellion Makes Global Collaboration Easier With Internationalization of Secure File Transfer Solution

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Get Back 30 - How to Let Users and CFO's Fall in Love with You

Summary: Get Back 30 is an IT initiative by a Fortune 50 Accellion customer that aims to relieve its (130,000+) employees from inefficient processes. In addition to making the end users and IT team happy, the multiplier effect on overall organizational capacity would make any CFO smile.

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There's a lot to be learned from a household name Fortune 50 multi-national firm that finds innovative ways to leverage the latest IT best practice to enhance its business processes. This Accellion customer has just launched an initiative to encourage its employees to become even more efficient through the use of time-saving technologies. The campaign is called Get Back 30, and it promotes the idea of recovering 30 minutes in the daily processes by doing things smartly. It’s a tangible drive to find more value for the company in its premier resource: its people.

I’m thrilled to tell you that the Accellion Secure File Transfer solution factors into the company’s Get Back 30 initiative by allowing employees to send files and large attachments within and outside the company in an easy and efficient manner. Employees are encouraged to use the Accellion solution to send large files instead of using awkward and time-consuming processes like FTP servers. I can’t think of a better endorsement of how our solution helps improve business processes that involve sending and receiving files.

As Get Back 30 rolls out, I expect more employees will welcome the easy-to-use secure file transfer solution, and find benefit in being able to quickly and securely trade work files with coworkers, clients and colleagues inside and outside the company.

While Get Back 30 is all about helping people become more efficient, increasing use of the Accellion solution within the company delivers a side benefit of making other technology more efficient, too. I’m speaking, of course, about the company’s enterprise email system. As more and more employees grow accustomed to sending their usual email attachments through an Accellion appliance, the new usage model relieves the strain on the overburdened email resources. Consequently, the company spends less time and money managing the burgeoning growth of the email system.

So, the benefit of Get Back 30 does not apply only to the end users, which is considerable as it is, but it also accrues to the IT team. They, too, “get back 30” when they expend less effort maintaining the enterprise email system. Their time can now be better spent being proactive with other IT projects.

So, how does this work out? Let's assume an organization of 10,000 people. Each person, on the conservative side, would recoup 60 minutes per month as a result of using the Accellion solution as part of the Get Back 30 initiative. That would work out to be 120,000 man hours that would not have been available without Accellion. This particular customer has more than 130,000 employees. Now, these are IT expenditures with ROI multiplier numbers that even the CFO would love.

ACA Guy


Accellion in the News


Media Coverage



Network World: Accellion updates secure file transfer appliance
Accellion updates secure file transfer appliance - user interface now available in six languages



Healthcare IT News: Clarian Health finds quick way to transfer filesClarian Health finds quick way to transfer files
: Clarian Health Partners’ telemedicine program... has found a way to save time, money – and aggravation – by getting done in two hours what might have taken two weeks in the past.


Press Releases


* Microsystems Selects Accellion’s Secure File Transfer Solution for its Large File Transfer Needs

* Accellion Makes Global Collaboration Easier With Internationalization of Secure File Transfer Solution