Industry expert Michael Osterman shares some great editorial and perspective in Messaging News on the Ipswitch acquisition of MessageWay.  He starts by pointing out that Ipswitch is positioned as a “Leader” in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed File Transfer….. As well as Ipswitch’s proven track record in the file transfer space (Nearly 20-years for those counting).

He also nailed what the acquisition immediately brings to the table as far as expanding Ipswitch’s range of solution offerings:  “(Ipswitch has) clearly boosted its position in the MFT space with this acquisition given that MessageWay’s MFT solutions are designed for high volume file transfer applications in the large enterprise (Global 2000) and service provider markets.”

I particularly like (and agree with) his answer to the question of “Why is MFT important?”

“Among the many reasons are two key ones:

First, while many users focus on email as a transport mechanism for business-critical content, the fact is that the vast majority of B2B content is actually sent using file-transfer systems, not email, including a large and growing number of application-to-application and application-to-human transfers.  This means that many organizations are relying on FTP or other systems that may not provide the throughput or performance they need.

Second, the consequences of data breaches can be enormous, reaching millions of dollars for a single data breach.  Many existing file transfer systems simply are not capable of providing the appropriate level of security for B2B content transfer.

While MFT is often about changing existing processes to make them more efficient or less costly, these systems can also create new revenue opportunities, as well.”

The fact remains that many organizations currently rely on old, outdated and often insecure legacy systems and processes that developers brought online years ago.  Often, these homegrown solutions are becoming increasingly difficult to manage and maintain…. And they provide very little visibility or control into file and data interactions.   Just based on that alone, I’d say that MFT is becoming increasingly more important with each passing day, exponentially so.