Posts from ‘WS_FTP Professional’
It’s been less than a day and I’ve already been asked twice about the effect of Symantec’s acqusition of PGP Corporation (announced today) will have on Ipswitch customers.
The technical answer is “none”. The OpenPGP standard has governed the industry for several years now and almost all PGP implementations, including the one Symantec acquired from PGP Corporation, are completely interoperable at this point.
I spent the day today at the CompuCom vendor fair in Dallas, TX. CompuCom is one of Ipswitch’s sales channel partners, and the purpose of attending today’s event was to talk about Ipswitch File Transfer solutions with CompuCom’s team of account managers and sales representatives.
Today’s goal was to raise awareness, education level and excitement about Ipswitch File Transfer solutions among CompuCom’s 130 or so software sales associates so that they, in turn, will proactively pitch our solutions to their accounts and ultimately close more deals.
With all the news around the Apple iPad, I was determined that I would not buy one until the second generation became available. With the second generation, prices will undoubtedly come down and I’ll get more functionality than what’s available in the first generation. I learned my lesson with the first iPhone and the first iPod.
As I sat around on Sunday feeling very smug, I looked over at my five-year-old son who was playing with his iPod Touch. It hit me that not only do I have to base the decision of when to buy an iPad on my technology geekness, I have to base it on my son’s needs and desires. Simply put, the iPad, and similar gadgets, were not built for my generation…but built for my son’s.
With more and more digital natives entering the workplace and procuring executive positions in companies all over the world, the traditional methodologies, mechanisms, and technologies for dealing with risk will have to change. The reason for this is simple: digital natives place a different level of risk on personal and enterprise intellectual property and information. In a world where everyone can be found on Facebook and the intimate details of every company can be found via blog sites, forum discussions, and on a company’s website itself, determining how much risk should be assigned to any individual piece of information is changing and in fact becoming more dynamic.
Let’s expand this thought. What do we need to do to ensure that our technology is being built for use by “Generation I” (ones who always had iPods) and digital natives? If issues around security and trust dramatically change, as we see them already, what does the future WS_FTP client and WS_FTP server look like? What are the expectations that our future customers will have for this technology? Is it just a new experience, e.g. GUI change? Or do we assume that many of the basics around security and management are taken care of? What does it mean for portability and mobility? Should a user be able to carry around their WS_FTP license for use on any machine? This begs an answer to the question…are Google, Apple and Microsoft my real competitors or are they just enabling the underlying infrastructure that will be and should be commoditized?
These are real questions that need real answers…and we need to have those answers very soon. As we embark on delivering technology and services that are aligned with our next-generation architecture, issues such as what to do about “Generation I” and digital natives must be addressed.
Just a few thoughts…
I recently received an inquiry from a reporter that read like this:
“Are you comforted, or left cold when you hear a product has FIPS 140-2 validation that guarantees it’s implementing encryption modules correctly? Assuming secure data transmission or storage is important in the use case, is this buzzword bingo or a valuable asset?”
My reply to this inquiry was uncharacteristically short:
“Today, fully validated FIPS 140-2 cryptography modules come free or bundled with your OS, your Java runtime, several application packages and some hardware components. These implementations are typically available for your own applications through well-documented APIs.
“Not using FIPS 140-2 cryptography in the year 2010 is like opening a savings account at a bank without the FDIC’s $250K-per-account guarantee. You could do it, and it might work, but why take the risk when a safer option is available for no extra charge?”
And so it shall remain: Ipswitch File Transfer products use FIPS 140-2 cryptography to protect data-in-transit and data-at-rest, and will continue to do so until FIPS 140-3 becomes the new law of the land.
Next week (March 1-4, 2010) I’ll be at the RSA Conference in San Fransciso. Please come down and see Ipswitch on the floor or drop me a note to set up a private time to talk.
Since we were there last year a lot has happened to Ipswitch File Transfer products.
- Ad Hoc Transfer Modules – Both MOVEit DMZ 7.0 and WS_FTP Server 7.5 will provide the ability for registered senders to send files to anyone with an email address from a web browser or Outlook email client. (The MOVEit DMZ version provides reply capabilities, encryption at rest, more online logs and the ability to send messages without files.)
- MOVEit Central Advanced Tasks – Complex, conditional workflows were made possible with the release of MOVEit Central 7.0.
- MOVEit DMZ Web Farms – Our most secure server gained the ability to scale horizontally on top of common database and file server tiers with the release of MOVEit DMZ 6.5.
- New Security Model in WS_FTP Server – WS_FTP Server 7.1 quietly rolled out a new “perimeter” security model to protect its web-based admin interface, based on suggestions from security personnel.
- MOVEit DMZ SaaS – Project leaders, small businesses and departments may now subscribe to a hosted service that provides secure storage, secure transport, delegation of authority and superb logging. This service is based on the latest version of MOVEit DMZ, deployed on a web farm in a datacenter that has achieved SAS 70 certification.
- MOVEit Central Corporate – A version of our workflow engine scaled to meet the needs of people with 10 or fewer remote servers to communicate with or project leaders
- Virtualization, 64-bit and Windows 7 Support – WS_FTP Professional 12.2 became the first major FTP client to be recognized by Microsoft as Windows 7 compatible (both 32-bit and 64-bit). Meanwhile, our server products expanded their support of 64-bit Microsoft Server platforms and their support of virtual platforms based on EMC’s VMWare and Microsoft’s Hyper-V.
- Microsoft Certified Partner – Ipswitch became a Microsoft Certified Partner last year, gaining access to software, including Windows 7, before it is released to the public.
- Gartner “Leader” Designation – Ipswitch was named as a “Leader” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrent, based largely on the ability of our MOVEit products to meet the needs of business customers, our forward-looking vision and our willingness to build or buy our way toward solutions that meet even more needs.
