One of today’s major IT challenges is the work of moving large amounts of data between systems and facilities, and doing so securely and economically. GoAnywhere, a secure data transit platform for Managed File Transfer (MFT), offers a solution. GoAnywhere provides autonomous control of a company’s data. The platform encrypts data sent between a company and its partners. This way, it establishes a healthy, trusted environment for transferring proprietary corporate information. In this article, IT Central Station members who use GoAnywhere share their use cases and return on investment (ROI), along with insights into the platform’s efficiency, speed, and productivity.
GoAnywhere Use Cases
IT Central Station members are putting GoAnywhere to work across a variety of use cases. For example, a system administrator at Serco, a small outsourcing company, consolidates “homegrown processes” to one location in a way that is workflow-based. GoAnywhere provides his team with complete control over sending file transfers. He confirms secure partnerships as he oversees a process wherein only chosen users can access critical information across the enterprise.
As he put it, “This is used in a virtual environment where a number of customers establish a requirement to send or receive files. The files are sent using SFTP and Zip with projects providing details to customers on when and what was sent. We send these files internally or externally.” He also uses the solution for “cleaning up data from sent or received files for projects and customers.” His environment consists of Windows and Linux systems, to which each customer presents the data to send or import.
Parul P., a data backup and recovery administrator at Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, a healthcare company with more than 5,000 employees, uses GoAnywhere for “file transfer between trading partners and internally to different applications on Windows, Linux, AIX, and iSeries machines.” Clients, vendors, and vital business users all connect securely with GoAnywhere.
A solutions manager at a tech services company found that using GoAnywhere “connects internet applications that traditionally are isolated.” He then said, “Instead of trying to build very costly interfaces or things like that, we send information from one app to the other app in the easiest but the most secure way possible.”
This user’s value proposition and workload are changing, which necessitates absolute assurance of security. He explained, “We just use MFT, and it does the work for us, but recently, we are being asked to connect not just internal applications but also external web services for government or other regulatory companies. With this type of solution, we are able to integrate not just the internal apps but also the external services. This is pretty much what we do with this solution.”
For the Police Department in California’s city of Modesto, the issue was a lack of communication between the department’s citation system and its RMS (Reports Management System). Hans B., a software analyst with the department, revealed that he had to move data between the systems, but they did not communicate. He needed a flexible and agile platform. With GoAnywhere, the workflow features eliminate the need for custom programs and scripts for file transfer. He said, “Here at the police department, we do a lot of file moving between systems. So we use it to pick up those files, move them over to that system, and then consume those files and data. We do a lot of that stuff. We also do exports to SFTP sites and automatic emails with warnings of server maintenance.”
Related Reading: How the City of Modesto Meets Trading Partner Requirements with MFT
Efficiency, Speed, and Productivity
MFT solutions have to be fast and efficient, enabling team productivity. The tech services solutions manager mentioned above spoke to these needs, remarking that GoAnywhere “allows us to connect internal applications and external web services—and has good speed, security and stability.” He noted, “Every integration used to take months with old SOA tools, integration buses, and that type of stuff. Now, we do integrations in a matter of days.”
Jim B. has been able to save considerable time by eliminating custom scripts for every transfer, which has been “an important and valuable step for the organization from an operations, maintenance, and support perspective.” He further commented, “We can build out a Managed File Transfer process in GoAnywhere with none of the hassles and headaches associated with scripts in an hour vs. custom scripting processes that would take significantly longer to develop and deploy.”
Compared to before he implemented GoAnywhere, Jim B.’s regular workflow processes “are faster, simpler, more supportable, and secure.” He then said, “With GoAnywhere, we are able to service our customers much faster and in a much more dependable, consistent and reliable manner.”
Hans B. is able to produce automatic reports, along with a few manual ones. He said, “These can be daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. We use GoAnywhere to complete manual processes—like things that we don't need to do very often. We'll go in and just click a button and it runs a bunch of things that we normally would have to do manually. It speeds up the process quite a bit. I have been able to eliminate at least 20 to 30 custom programs and scripts by centralizing everything in GoAnywhere.”
Jay T., a senior developer/analyst at retailer Lamps Plus, saw GoAnywhere as an asset that is agile, making it possible for his team to be more productive. The movement of data to and from his company’s IBM system is simplified and time-saving. He related, “We're able to craft solutions to little challenges faster, and that makes us more productive.”
He offered an example. He helped a person in his organization update an old program that produces a report for a user. He said, “I helped her create an SQL view and then make use of that view with GoAnywhere, which now emails a simple spreadsheet to the user. She was able to accomplish that in a fraction of the time it would have taken to modify the original program.”
Getting ROI with GoAnywhere
GoAnywhere users on IT Central Station are finding ROI for their solutions. Parul P. confirmed that “it saves lots of time in terms of administration.” He commented, “With this product, I can perform other duties and it requires less intervention on a daily basis.” For his part, Hans B. has streamlined file transfer processes, which led him to state, “Our ROI is definitely positive.”
Frank R., a systems administrator at an insurance company with more than 10,000 employees, has seen ROI in many different areas of the platform. The solution, according to him, “Meets all our needs, stays up and running and gives us the confidence that the data is going to be securely transferred.” His revenue stream runs smoothly with increased security, having implemented GoAnywhere to keep things moving, safely and efficiently.
He shared, “For the money we make using this, it is well priced. Without it, we would be in trouble. If something broke and we couldn't get that data through, we're going to be losing a lot of money. So, I guess the return on investment is always great because the data is getting out. It is not that we make money per data that we send out. It is just that the data that goes out is very critical to the revenue stream.”
A senior application analyst at a healthcare company discovered ROI with GoAnywhere by eliminating manual job execution. In his case, GoAnywhere “frees up our staff from having to write code.” GoAnywhere’s features and benefits have helped him grow processing capabilities with speed and efficiency and reduce resources for a better ROI. He added, “Over the time we have had it, and given the things we have been able to do with it, it has paid for itself. Using all the features it has saves the company money.”
To learn more about what IT Central Station members think about MFT, visit IT Central Station online or experience GoAnywhere yourself with a 30-day free trial.
