In my last three blog posts on the Ziff Davis MFT survey, we dove into security and compliance, highlighted other notable strengths such as speed, reliability, scalability and up-time, and looked at some perceived deployment challenges.

Today, let’s look at the business benefits of a MFT and how they impact an organization’s bottom line.

The survey did a nice job uncovering some supporting business processes which respondents claim were positively impacted by their MFT solution.  These include:  communications with remote office and remote workers, collaborating with external business partners, vendors and suppliers, distribution and fulfillment, compliance management and customer service.

Here’s a nice summary:  “Note how these improvements address the bottom line for an organization directly by improving efficiency, security, and customer outreach all at the same time.”  That’s quite an impressive trifecta!

I’ll conclude this 4-part blog series with a couple of closing thoughts:

• I wholeheartedly agree with MFT solutions wearing the “unsung security and compliance solution” label…. And that growing perception will spread as more and more organizations look at refining, automating, optimizing and securing their file transfer policies, processes and workflows.

• It all comes down to visibility, management and enforcement.  Organizations need visibility into data interactions, including files, events, people, policies and processes.  They also need to be able to manage and automate internal and external data transfers and interactions.  And of course, organizations must be able to easily create and enforce administrator defined policies and rules, including (but certainly not limited to) security.

Want more insight into the evolving MFT space?  Watch a webcast “Managed File Transfer:  Directions for the Coming Year” in which Ipswitch’s Frank Kenney is joined by Accellion’s Paula Skokowski, Attachmate’s Sam Morris and a contingent of eWeek Editors.