Time to bridge MFT and Content Collaboration Platform

Gartner has stated in its recent Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms (read the full report here) that 80% of large and midsize organizations in mature regions will have deployed one or more content collaboration platforms (CCP) products. Gartner defines CCP as a range of content-centric platforms enabling secure file productivity and content collaboration for individuals and teams.

This also includes supporting the creation of a modern digital workplace. It’s the evolution of the EFSS (Enterprise File Sharing and Synchronization) products. Learn about seven effective strategic guidelines for EFSS here. MFT and Content Collaboration Platform have come together successfully.

MFT and Content Collaboration Platform

Now, this is not meant to be a lesson on CCP and MFT. But let’s step back and look at both. Further, why is there a value in bridging the two for MFT and Content Collaboration Platform?

CCP solutions address the use cases of people sharing and collaborating well with other people. This can be within an organization and with customers, partners and suppliers.

The focused is placed on ease of use and universal access from any device, anytime, anywhere to optimize collaboration with other individuals.

On the other hand, with Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions, the use cases are driven by business processes typically between systems of record. These are event and schedule-driven. Premiums are placed on automation, monitoring and security. Think “locked down back-office processes.”

There is definitely a “better together” scenario if we can bridge MFT with CCP we could open up many new use cases that we have not been able to support before.

Been there, done that but failed

In particular, MFT vendors tried to include file sharing and human-based file transfer use cases into their offer. They delivered Frankenstein-like products that end-users basically refused to use as they were not finding the simplicity they desired.

Also, patterns and use cases are so different, that it was also creating performance issues on the MFT side. But the intention is still valid, to achieve maximum efficiency and to address hybrid patterns within the organization, IT needs to deliver MFT and CCP, as well as expose them as a consumer-like services to end-users.

The solution is not replacing one with the other

Whatever solution that tried to replace other–MFT by EFSS or EFSS by MFT was just doomed to fail. Both serve a vital purpose and bridging the two properly opens the door to many new possibilities. This is the approach we have taken here at Axway. We have created a bridge between our leading Axway Syncplicity CCP solution and our leading Axway SecureTransport MFT Gateway solution.

The two solutions are governed solutions and managed and controlled by IT. By doing so, you permit new use cases. This includes an application delivering files to a person or a team, and a person or team sending a file to an application. All while providing the familiar user interface the end users are already using with the benefits of secure anytime, anywhere, any device access.

Take advantage of bridging CCP and MFT