THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE APPLIES TO:

• EFT (All Versions)

DISCUSSION

There are three key factors to consider when comparing Document Management Systems (DMS), such as Microsoft SharePoint, to EFT:

• Trust / Relationships—In the typical EFT scenario, a business is transferring files to/from EXTERNAL parties -- such as vendors, partners, customers, resellers, supply chain, etc. Generally, these parties are NOT part of the enterprise on which EFT is running. However, when considering a DMS, there is an implicit assumption that all people that have access to the shared documents have the same level of trust or relationship within the enterprise. This means adding those external parties to the Active Directory controller, providing username and password management on the Enterprise AD server for those external partners (or setting up a complex federated identity management system, like ADFS). The enterprise must answer how to allow access to those shared files, too; do those files reside on a computer in the DMZ so that external parties can get to those files? That often is not very secure, and can violate mandates such as PCI DSS, FFIEC, or other regulations that insist on protecting the data at rest. In a nutshell, if the customer relationship with those external parties are anything less than trusted, intimate members of the EFT enterprise, then a DMS is generally NOT the right answer.
• Transactions vs. Collaboration—DMS are very good for sharing and collaborating on documents, such as revising and red-lining Microsoft Word documents. These are very human-involved actions, where humans do the editing, read email updates, review changes, and contribute more changes. But EFT is oriented around TRANSACTIONS—that is, data is transmitted from one system to another for integration. Note that the word is SYSTEM, not HUMAN. If the scenario for transferring files involves regular processes, such as nightly batch jobs or in response to newly generated files, then transaction-oriented EFT is better suited than a human-oriented DMS. If there is the need to automate the reaction to data, such as pushing data that a partner sends to a mainframe or moving those files to a secure location on the NAS and initiating a back-end process while also sending alert emails, then transaction-oriented EFT is much more effective than a human-oriented DMS.
• Large File Transfer—DMS are good at collaboration on documents, but only up to a certain size. They are NOT well suited for large file transfers, such as a 600MB file. They do not support checkpoint restart, streaming transfers, optimized/accelerated delivery, and so on. EFT was designed with large, managed file transfer in mind. in fact, Gartner, Inc. has positioned GlobalSCAPE in the “Leaders” Quadrant in its June 2008 Magic Quadrant for Managed File Transfer report.