I
s your IT team capable of building a rudimentary customer resource management system, website platform, or business intelligence tool? Maybe. Have any of you CIOs or IT managers asked your IT team to build any of those things? Of course not! What a colossal waste of time and money that would be. Not to mention that it would be foolish to stake the success on your organization’s mission on DIY systems essential to your critical business processes when excellent commercial products are available. That’s why you invest in proven and mature tools like Salesforce, WordPress, and Power BI.
So why have you asked the same skilled technologists—on whom your IT operations depend—to take valuable time from their core functions and tasked them with building out a solution for automated managed file transfer? Is it because your budget is already tight, and you think you’ll save a few pennies? Are you under the mistaken impression that file transfer automation is easy, and not a terribly important business process with serious data security, privacy, and compliance implications? Have you not been reading the headlines?
Don’t Want to Spend the Money?
I recently had a conversation with an IT project manager working on upgrading some systems for a healthcare organization. This person explained their needs to us and we demonstrated how our Diplomat MFT software could securely and efficiently handle the transfer of medical, financial, and other business files typical for a healthcare digital supply chain. Then they groused about not wanting to spend the money on something they could probably do in-house.
I had to laugh. At $1,999 per year, Diplomat MFT standard edition would be the right fit for this moderately sized organization. The average pay rate for an IT professional where this organization is located is about $40 per hour, meaning the cost of our secure, proven managed file transfer solution is equivalent to 50 hours of one IT staff member’s labor. If the organization really couldn’t justify $2,000 for a product that could be installed and operating in a matter of minutes, and that will save their staff the time and aggravation it would take to manage these processes manually (not to mention do it more accurately), it might signal bigger problems. Knowing that, if I were the IT guy asked to build out a DIY MFT solution, I might start looking for a new place to ply my skills.
Tried and True or Homebrew?
Does it really make sense to ask that person—who is likely already overburdened with their regular workload—to stop what they are doing to cobble something together with Python, Powershell, or Bash and some open-source software (like the recently weaponized version of WinSCP open-source file transfer application)? Will they remember to build in features to address security, auditability, reliability, and notifications? Will they fully document and support their creation for the (inconvenient) moment something goes wrong? And when something does go wrong, will you explain to organization management why, instead of spending $2,000 on a proven commercial product, you risked the organization’s reputation and patient safety and privacy on a homebrewed solution?
Do we raise the alarm over the foolishness and dangers of DIY MFT a lot? You bet we do. We’ve invested a lot of time, resources, experience, and expertise into building a rock-solid managed file transfer platform. And because we know that secure, automated file transfer is a mission-critical business process no matter the size of your organization, we are committed to offering our products at a fair, transparent, and ethical price. No organization should have to risk a data breach, non-compliance, or a violation of service level agreements because they can’t afford secure and reliable managed file transfer software.
It’s Important to Us
And because we are determined to make MFT available for every organization that needs it, we take it personally when we encounter IT Leaders who fail to treat their secure file transfer automation needs with the same level of seriousness and professionalism they would their investments in CRM, website, or BI tools. Stop trying to build solutions on your own, only to experience the downstream headache with supporting, fixing, and extending them. And don’t claim poormouth to us when you’re shopping for an MFT solution. We’ve done the math (and we know what our competitors charge).
Coviant Software offers an affordable enterprise-grade automation tool for secure file transfers, with the best support team in the industry. Save yourself future headaches; take a look at our solution and keep your IT staff focused on the things they do that provide true value to your company.
