MFT in the Cloud in 2023
If you haven’t got a cloud first initiative, then are you even a real organisation? No one actually buys kit of any description these days from what I can make out, I can’t even remember what a server really looks like… Which is actually sad, because data centres are really blooming cool. (Yes this pun is intended!)
The stats reveal all we need to know when it comes to cloud adoption, and unless you live under a rock you’ll not be surprised at all to hear that Cloud and shared services accounted for 55.4% of IT infrastructure spending last year. A figure projected to increase by 2025 to north of 65%.
Of that spend, IaaS & PaaS counts for 45% of it and SaaS taking a healthy 28% respectively. Whilst 99% of readers will know the difference between their aaS and their elbow, for those who need a pointer:
Figure 1: Cloud vs On-Prem comparison
With such a penchant for the cloudiverse, it’ll come as no surprise that at some point, Managed File Transfer (MFT) and the cloud cross paths. Whilst you’re deciding which option to go for, the good news is that nothing is off limits!
I’ll start with the SaaS, pay someone to run it all, patch it all, manage the infrastructure and just get a bill for what you use. Normally the option with the least headache in software consumption model, be warned though, this might not be the case for a large complex or existing MFT customer.
Certain elements of the software you had on prem might not be available (SMB transfers, running powershell scripts and Active Directory integration for example). Cost might be a lot harder to swallow than you think too with a pay-per-transfer type economy. In direct comparison to the existing on-premise alternative, a perpetual license which has likely to have paid for itself tenfold during ownership. If that’s still too much, HANDD can relieve you of that and take care of the application through their managed services framework!
Secondly, is a combination of IaaS leveraging some PaaS elements where available. This is now the most common approach for existing and new deployments of MFT. 91% of businesses globally confirm they make use of a public cloud provider (AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure etc) in some guise and for good reason. You’ll therefore be thrilled to hear that deploying MFT software into an EC2 or Virtual Machine is no different to deploying it on premise! Some vendors are even providing images in the respective providers online stores to speed up your cloud adoption and deployment.
Furthermore, this opens the door for interoperability with PaaS elements within those platforms, such as Database as a Service, lambda functions or backing the user storage off to a blob or bucket.
Finally, all providers HANDD work with are consistently adding “cloud” functionality into their software and roadmap to enable your organisation to integrate with all the cloud services already at your disposal.
If you’re considering MFT in the Cloud, or need to understand how you can use MFT to save money, reduce complexity and minimise man hours talk to HANDD to discuss your options in more detail, call us on +44 (0) 845 643 4063 or request a call back here.
Further reading
Cloud MFT; Versatile cloud hosting options for your MFT