Five capabilities of Axway’s secure file transfer secret weapon: Transfer CFT

“Secret weapon?! Tell me more about this innovative secure file transfer technology which has just come off the Axway production line!” – I am hoping you are thinking. But this is not a story about something new, rather a solution which has been quietly powering many of the things we take for granted in our day-to-day lives for the past 40 years.

If you rely on your local grocery store for fresh food, engage with a bank to manage your finances, or have ever travelled by car, then you have benefited from the capabilities of the silent hero of industry: Transfer CFT. (And, if you don’t do any of those things, I don’t believe you.)

So… enough of the build-up, what is Transfer CFT?

What is Transfer CFT?

Axway’s Transfer CFT is the only internal managed file transfer (MFT) solution available today that provides the robust capabilities usually found only in external MFT solutions. It gives widely distributed organizations consistent quality of service and a uniform interface to securely transfer and track files between disparate hardware and software platforms.

Transfer CFT is nonintrusive and reduces the design, implementation, and operational costs associated with governing the flow of data for critical multi-site business processes. It helps you consolidate diverse platforms to a unified, centralized, and secure framework for better control over your internal operations.

How does Transfer CFT work?

Put simply, Transfer CFT securely exchanges data between agent-like CFT nodes.

If you are familiar with file transfer solutions, you’ll know that the prevailing methodology is a hub-and-spoke design, whereby agents communicate back to a MFT sever. Should an agent need to send a file from its host to another agent, it would need to send it via the MFT server.

Transfer CFT makes use of the more modern mesh topology, in which nodes can transfer between each other, improving speed, resiliency, and making it better suited to large and complex environments, with significant throughput requirements.

With so many features to write about, I have been assigned the difficult task of highlighting my top five.

#1 – Transfer CFT is hyper-connectable

Despite its tenure, Transfer CFT has made sure to keep up with modern times, supporting 16 different operating systems; is interoperable with Apache KAFKA, Azure Blobs, Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage; can be invoked by the REST API, command line, the monitoring of directories for new files or scheduling.

These capabilities are easily overlooked as just additional storage locations and interfaces expected in any contemporary solution, but consider the nature of problem which Transfer CFT solves:

By being hyper-connectable, it allows organizations with hybrid environments – and even multi-cloud environments – to connect disparate zones and applications through automated file movement.

It is critically important for organizations to recognize that using cloud storage has created blind spots in their integration ecosystems, with many transfers now taking place without auditability or oversight, in an “unmanaged” form.

The very original purpose that managed file transfer was created to solve.

#2 – Nodes can be containerized

Containerization has grown with rapid popularity due its improved security through reduction in reliance on full Operating Systems, its scalability possibilities, and portability.

With Transfer CFT being the glue that connects disparate systems, network zones, and applications, those same advantages are highly desirable. The ability to quickly and securely “spin up” nodes is particularly useful.

In the case of security – given that the MFT marketplace has had several high-profile breaches in recent years – there is a new focus on data exchange solutions and the types of data they transmit. Fortuitously, Axway has spent the last few years focusing its R&D teams on security, which includes support for containerization.

Today, Transfer CFT supports both Docker and Kubernetes.

See also: Optimize Your MFT Solution with Cloud Containerization

#3 – Transfer CFT is remarkably fast

Connectivity, security, and portability are all pluses when it comes to file transfer technology. But let’s face it, no one says “make it more secure” on a roller coaster.

Throughput is a highly important metric in any data exchange technology, and it cannot be overlooked. The higher the throughput, the more capacity available, and the better aligned it is to the growth strategy of its owner.

By leveraging multiple parallel connections between nodes – known as pTCP (Parallel Transmission Control Protocol), Transfer CFT can achieve acceleration rates that are significantly faster than traditional file transfer protocols.

For example, for large files over long distances on high bandwidth networks, Transfer CFT can be up to 70x faster than FTP.

Additionally, consider the architectural benefits of Transfer CFT – which we touched upon earlier in the blog – and its impact on overall speed.

Traditional MFT vendor solutions are designed with a centralized MFT server in a hub-and-spoke or star topology. In these cases, transfers between nodes must traverse the MFT server, adding to the end-to-end transfer time.

Transfer CFT, however, transmits directly between nodes – meaning that not only do we benefit from the principles of pTCP, but also from shorter distances offered by decentralization.

#4 – Files can be prioritized and retried if failed

All files are equal; but some have more priority than others. The nature of data exchange and file transfer solutions are that they handle the most sensitive information our businesses make use of.

Sometimes, due to regulatory or legislative compliance, but also because businesses are fundamentally and operationally reliant on the transfer of data.

Just imagine for a moment if an airline couldn’t share manifests and flight paths with its operations crew at HQ or traffic control; or if a large online retailer was unable to dispatch goods in time because communication with payment providers was queued behind other transmissions.

Both scenarios require a more intelligent MFT service. In both scenarios, through file prioritization and automatic re-attempts upon transfer failure, Transfer CFT can help.

The concept of prioritization is particularly interesting: most businesses will have experienced periods of time in which demand and throughput are heightened, in which backlogs can appear.

The ability to prioritize to make best use of available resources is highly desirable and will form part of a robust business continuity plan.

#5 – Send node-to-node, broadcast, or to external trading partners

Axway’s Transfer CFT can be configured in several different transmission modes, depending on the use case.

Examples include:

• One-to-one (1-1): nodes are simply transmitting from source to singular destination.
• Broadcast (1-N): a node can send the same file(s) to multiple target nodes simultaneously, from a single transmission.
• Store and Forward (1-1-N): a node is reachable via a proxy node and so hops onto this intermediary to get to its destination.

In addition, thanks to integration capabilities with Axway SecureTransport or a gateway, CFT can be bridged into other security zones or with trading partners.

Once again, it is this common theme of decentralized flexibility which makes Transfer CFT well suited to complex and large environments.

Relevance of Transfer CFT in modern IT

It’s probably unfair to label Transfer CFT as an old reliable tool, since it breaks the idiom by being full of modern tricks. IT seems more to be a battle of relevance.

On the one hand, new solutions often arrive and depart in quick succession due to a lack of need, or because they fail to keep up with changes in the market. Conversely, there’s an old guard who have adapted through time and remain bulwarks of our lives. Would you believe that Microsoft is now 50 years old? Older than many who work in the IT industry.

Transfer CFT very much belongs to the second group.

Despite 40 years of change in a marketplace which has seen a rapid growth in operational demand, catastrophic security breaches, and ever-growing expectations for throughput, Transfer CFT has remained adaptive.

See also: Secure File Transfer Fuels Growth for Dun and Bradstreet

And so, while this list could include any other equally important and impressive five capabilities (and there are of course, many more), it is not the capabilities that are necessarily impressive. It is Transfer CFT’s continued and unwavering relevance and the continued interest it receives from customers and prospects around the world.