Bizarre Tales from the World of Managed File Transfer

I launched FTP-Stream as a hosted FTP service in 2005 thinking it would be useful in specific and obvious sectors such as print and publishing, creative agencies, film and TV. Over the years since I have been amazed by the diversity of the customer base, that’s diversity by geography, industry sector and business size. The range could not be greater.

For example there’s the marketing department of any medium to large company who needs to share large image or video files with press and suppliers; the oil and gas sector transfer huge file – seismic data for analysis for example. And mostly they come to FTP-Stream as we have no file size limits. Same goes for tech businesses who need to share huge disk images worldwide – files are often 50 gig!

FTP-Stream is used for document control on large and complex projects such as the development of the 2012 Olympic facilites as well as the running of the London games.

The composer Rossini once said “Give me a laundry list and I will set it to music”, I’d like to challenge him with our list of customer sectors:

Academia, Air Traffic Control, Animators, Architects, Automotive, Aviation, Biotechnology, Brewers, Broadcasters, Charities & NGOs, Chemicals, Commodity Traders, Construction, Creative agencies, Data Capture, Defense, Direct Mail, Education, Electronics, Energy, Engineering, Entertainment, Exhibition & Display, Fashion, Film & TV, Food Industry, Formula 1, Gaming, Government Agencies, Insurance, Investment Banking, IT Support, Law, Litigation Support, Manufacturing, Maritime, Metals & Minerals, Medical, Metrology, Music, Oil & Gas, Olympics 2012, Packaging, Pharmaceuticals, Photographers, Photo Libraries, Political Parties, Printers, Post Production, Public Relations, Publishers, Real Estate, Retail, Software, Steel, Theatre, Theatrical Agencies, Translators, Travel, Trucking, Venture Capital, Zoological Gardens.

Geographical distribution is also interesting, we have customers in 40 countries and users everywhere. We recently got our first customer in Mongolia – seems they’ve hit pay dirt there!

Of course not all file transfer is interactive – FTP-Stream is widely used for machine to machine automated file transfer particularly using FTP, SFTP and FTPS. There’s a few anecdotes that illustrate that:

When you’re checking the electronic menu board in a leading US burger chain think how the data on the display is fed and refreshed …

You’re driving on the highway on a newly built embankment, probably not too worried about landslips? That’s OK, because motion detectors will be embedded and instantly reporting any movement to a control center …

Still on the highway and tuned into local radio, did you wonder how a small local station is fed their content: music, international news, weather …

Hopefully this doesn’t happen but say you need medical transportation – how are the despatch orders managed and distributed by the largest provider in the Southern US…

Congratulations you guessed, all through FTP-Stream. So whether you’re watching a movie, eating in a restaurant, going to the Zoo, going to the races, watching the Olympics… or even, in some countries, paying your taxes… OK I won’t go on, but you get the point.

If you have any comments or questions about secure file transfer you can mail me antony@maytech.net, we like nothing better than talking bizarre file sharing workflows.

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