FTP Replacement with Gladinet Cloud

clip_image001Traditionally, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) has been the standard for transferring and sharing files. However, it is not without its problems. These include concerns about security, cost, efficiency, reliability and simplicity. For these and other reasons, many businesses are looking to replace FTP with a cloud storage solution. Amazon S3 is a very good cloud storage option. However, it is more of a building block than solution. This article talks about a solution that is built on top of Amazon S3. 
Gladinet Cloud for Teams offers a great FTP replacement. The service allows you to attach a local folder to the cloud, which immediately makes any of its files accessible anywhere, and synchronizes access to the folder by maintaining version control of files that are written simultaneously. Under the hood, the local folder is migrated to Amazon S3 by default, while allowing you to plug-in your own external cloud storage accounts.  Once the local folder is attached to the cloud, it can be exposed to other team members using access controls provided in the service’s management interface. So you end up with several members of your team sharing access to the same set of files in a centrally controlled environment. Essentially, this may be what you want to achieve with the old FTP technology.
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The instant accessibility of attached folders deserves some emphasis as it mitigates one of the pain points of cloud migration. That pain is usually experienced when a large data set needs to be moved to the cloud over a relatively slow connection. For example, even a reasonable 10Mbps upstream connection can’t upload more than 5GB in an hour, Just imagine how long it would take to upload 10TB of data! Fortunately, with attached folders, the time it takes to complete the initial upload will not determine how long the cloud migration will take. Instead, everything is immediately accessible even as the data in the attached folder is synchronized with the cloud in the background.
tour2_prodThere are several advantages of using the cloud to share files. For instance, FTP servers require that an additional communication channel (port 21) be opened through your firewall, increasing your attack surface. Cloud communication, on the other hand requires no additional channels since it uses http on port 80 which is already allowed through most firewalls. Security is further enhanced since we use a secure version of http called https on port 443.
In addition to being more secure, a cloud FTP solution tends to be more cost effective, efficient and reliable. There is no need to maintain FTP servers onsite and there are efficiencies of scale that can be leveraged when the infrastructure required for reliability is centralized and managed by cloud storage service providers.
What’s more, Gladinet Cloud can be configured to use Amazon S3, or any of these providers (Google Cloud Storage, Open Stack, Rackspace, and any S3 compatible service) as its internal storage, yielding a file sharing solution that is completely under your control while leveraging the benefits of cloud storage to provide a secure, easily managed file sharing solution that should prove a welcome FTP replacement for many small and medium sized organizations.
To see an example, please take a look at this file sharing video.
For more information about our solutions, please visit our website.

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