There’s no shortage of information available explaining the value of performing analytical activities with your file transfer data (see MFT analytics and tooltips meet file transfers top five challenges), but there’s a little less information on how Axway’s SecureTransport customers can get started with this.
In this blog, we’ll look at the steps required to implement Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport, to get up and running and get some data in your dashboard.
Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport overview
Let’s start by looking at what Embedded Analytics is, and the value it provides.
Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport is an application built on top of Axway Decision Insight. It consists of pre-configured dashboards and notifications, providing real-time operational and strategic analytics and alerts for SecureTransport. This enables business users to proactively identify and respond to abnormal situations before they become critical.
A key aspect of Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport is that it provides real-time visibility, not reporting on data that has been archived to a data warehouse.
You can think of it in terms of your car’s navigation system, which provides real-time notifications and alerts for traffic congestion and allows you to make informed decisions. That same information 30 minutes later has far less value.
Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport provides the following benefits:
- Reduces business risk through increased responsiveness: automatically notify key stakeholders when important or critical accounts exhibit unusual metrics, or when key transfers are delayed or have failed.
- Improves efficiency: Improve operational efficiency with better Service Level Agreement management.
- Scalability: Organizations using SecureTransport for their organization’s critical transfers require a scalable solution to provide analytical capabilities for very large numbers of partners and transfers.
Embedded Analytics is an option for SecureTransport; it can be used irrespective of whether SecureTransport is deployed on-premises, in a private Cloud, or as an Axway Managed component.
Choose the right tool for the job
If you’ve deployed SecureTransport you may also have deployed Axway Sentinel. SecureTransport customers have the option of using both Sentinel and Embedded Analytics to gather data and report on it. So how do these differ?
- Sentinel will display operational information coming from SecureTransport, which it gathers and stores. For example, this could be the number of transfers, the time taken for different transfers to complete, the number of errors, etc.… There are a number of pre-defined events, reports, and dashboards supplied with Sentinel, and administrators can create additional ones.
- Embedded Analytics, on the other hand, will display business-related information coming from SecureTransport. For example, this could be the reporting of anomalies in the usual flow of data; or how many times an SLA was missed because the data transfer did not occur as expected.
To explain this a different way: Sentinel will display information on how well your MFT infrastructure is performing, whereas Embedded Analytics will display information on how well your business is performing and allow you to proactively manage business-related issues.
To re-use the car navigation analogy: Sentinel can be thought of as reporting on the overall traffic conditions, based on the current and past situations, whereas Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport will pinpoint, report, and address specific problems that will affect you.
If you are in the process of selecting an MFT solution, check what the competition can offer. Most offer some type of operational dashboards, but very few have the level of business analytics that Axway can offer.
Where can customers get Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport?
SecureTransport customers wanting to use Embedded Analytics should contact their customer support representative, who will be able to provide them with the necessary information. In addition, customers will need to acquire Axway Decision Insight.
Installing and configuring Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport
There are detailed instructions on downloading, installing, and configuring Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport here.
I’m not going to repeat the instructions, but I did want to point out that with release 2.4 Axway has considered customer feedback, and considerably enhanced the deployment process, to reduce the time required to be up and running.
Release 2.4:
- Significantly reduced deployment times
- Includes automated scripts
- Has a comprehensive and easy to follow step-by-step startup guide.
SecureTransport customers will start to see data appearing in Embedded Analytics in a very short amount of time and will be able to quickly benefit from the prebuilt dashboards, alerts, punctuality checks and the automatic resubmit of file transfers.
What’s next…
Because many SecureTransport customers use the solution for their critical business exchanges, understanding and proactively addressing business-related issues is key.
Axway is investing heavily in this area, and without spilling the beans too much, you can expect to see rich additional intelligent analytics capabilities making their way into the solution soon! Stay tuned.
Further information on Embedded Analytics for SecureTransport is available here.