Technical Workshop: MFT File Transfer Patterns, Operations, and Security in the Enterprise

FTP and File Transfer has been around for over 40 years. Things used to be simple with one-to-one transfers, but with today's enterprise-wide environment there are many file transfer patterns. How does one achieve a uniform, consistent solution?

Technical Workshop:
MFT File Transfer Patterns, Operations, and Security in the Enterprise
Half day workshop

Brisbane - Tuesday 8 May 2012 (am) - Cliftons, 288 Edward St
Canberra - Wednesday 9 May 2012 (am) - Waldorf on London, 2 Akuna St
Melbourne - Thursday 10 May 2012 (am) - Cliftons, Level 1, 440 Collins St
Sydney - Friday 11 May 2012 (am) - Portside Centre, Symantec House, Level 5, 207 Kent St

Topics & Synopsis :

Part 1: File Transfer Patterns, Flows, Operations, and Security in the Enterprise

Learn from a world expert and visionary. This section will focus on all the different types of file transfer within an organization. File transfer is often perceived as a single pattern. Can MFT be used as an off the shelf integration technology for multiple patterns? Can we avoid in-house scripts and coding?

How do we achieve comprehensive file movement and orchestration internally between systems and externally with trading partners? Most patterns are not new, as many exist today for Messaging and Application Systems, however it is the innovative application of multiple patterns with MFT that solves many problems and pain points.

File transfer patterns:
- External transfers and channels
- MFT / B2B gateway and protocol mediation
- Hub & spoke
- Data governance
- Mail-boxing inbox/outbox
- Internal transfers and channels:
- Logical destination concepts
- Peer-to-peer, point-to-point, one-to-many
- Multi point: many-to-one, one-to-many
- Grid / mesh
- Enterprise File Bus (to align with ESB)
- Publish and subscribe
- System to system, server to server
- Multi-site
- Application to application (A2A)
- Application independent file transfer
- Enterprise Application Integration (EAI and APIs)
- File Transfer & messaging interoperability, and B2B integration (eg. MQ, JMS)
- Bridges, channel adaptors
- Multi-silo transfers for End-to-End (E2E) business processes
- File replication, synchronization
- Loose coupling versus tight coupling
- Ad hoc transfers and channels:
- Human to Human (H2H)
- Human to System (H2S)
- Portals for upload/download (eg. drop boxes)
- Portal integration
- Mail-boxing
- Social media interactions
- Email attachment offloading
- Synchronization
- Use cases (eg. point to point, one-to-many, broadcast, reply)

Comparing integration patterns and channels:
- File construction, composition (including Metadata)
- Routing (pass files to different processes and end points on the channels)
- Transformation, formatting (Communicating with different data formats)
- End Points (how do they connect with the channel)
- Polling
- Event driven
- Client or server
- Consumption of file(s)

File Transfer Flow Transformation & Manipulation Routines:
- File merging, correlation, sequencing, aggregation
- File splitting
- File wrapping, unwrapping, Metadata, chained wrapping
- File & data validation
- File & data duplicates (includes content)
- File & data transformation (eg. to/from XML) and translation
- File & data formatting and mapping
- File & data enrichment

File Transfer Flow Control, Systems Management, Operations, and Automation:
- Unified management and control bus
- Centralized versus decentralized systems management and operations
- Centralized monitoring
- Centralized administration
- Centralized flow management and operations processes
- Centralized on-boarding, key management, and partner management
- Centralized service management
- Centralized flow repository
- Centralized flow automation
- Centralized complex flows
- Metadata (eg. content aware based routing)
- Scheduling, batch
- Real-time, event based
- External interfaces, triggers (eg. Web Services management)
- Event management
- Queuing
- Push, Pull, Get, Put patterns
- Data governance (encryption, policy, content)
- Using tool suites and engines for repetitive tasks versus scripting and coding

Part 2: File Transfer SLA's, Operations, and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

Learn about key pain point for file transfer. Have my files arrived on time (SLA's)? Where are my lost or delayed files? Has the whole business process completed for the movement of the files(s) across many servers and applications? Can I get metrics on activity? This section will focus on monitoring the movement of files throughout the enterprise and externally with trading partners.

- BAM versus infrastructure monitoring versus synthetic transactions
- Correlation, sequencing, and integration with E2E business processes
- Exception handling, invalid file channels
- Monitoring non-events (specific files arrived by 4pm?)
- SLA monitoring and KPIs
- Track and trace lost or delayed files
- Integration with other monitors (who is the monitor of the monitors?)
- Technical layer versus business layers
- When is an error not an error? (eg. how to handle retries?)
- How to define a common interpretation by all stakeholders of BAM concepts and needs

Part 3: Infrastructure Architecture, Implementation, and Security for MFT

Learn from someone who has installed MFT in over 100 large enterprises in Australia and USA. This section will focus on the practical implementation, the non-functional aspects, which are very important and can be difficult to do well. Operational reliability is paramount. Security and governance is vital. We can also apply some cloud computing concepts for elasticity for provisioning, and scaling as demand increases.

- Infrastructure prerequisites
- High Availability, clustering
- Performance, scalability, and elasticity as demand grows
- Security architecture, prerequisites, best practices
- Authentication, provisioning
- Guaranteed delivery channels
- Auditing
- Storage (NAS, SAN)
- Physical versus logical addressing
- Protocols
- Multi-vendor integration
- Content inspection and encryption
- Large files:
- Checkpoint, restart
- Special protocols (PeSIT, UDP, AS2)
- Concurrency
- Bandwidth control, throttling
- File transfer acceleration

Synopsis:

FTP and File Transfer has been around for over 40 years. Things used to be simple with one-to-one transfers, but with today's enterprise-wide environment there are many file transfer patterns. How does one achieve a uniform, consistent solution? Can your users and applications be independent of the file transfer solution? Is FTP or MFT a suitable enterprise wide solution for all transfers? How do you implement a mission critical solution, so that breakages will not disrupt your business?

Nowadays enterprises are typically comprised of hundreds (or thousands) of trading partners, hundreds of applications, and multiple websites. Customers, business partners, and internal staff don't worry about system boundaries for business interactions, regardless of how many internal systems the business process cuts across. A single business transaction, or file transfer, may consist of processes and transfers that can span across 3 to 10 different systems, environments, or applications (silos), but from a users' perspective it is a single transaction or file transfer.

How are the transfers coordinated between users, and between applications? As the number of users or systems or applications increase this could become tedious and traditionally would require the sender (or system) to have knowledge about the receiver. Every time a different or new system is added, would the users or applications or transfers have to be adjusted to the new environment? File transfer integration solutions can quickly become complex because they deal with multiple users, applications, data formats, channels, routing, secure data exchange, transformation, reliability and resiliency with these elements spread across multiple platforms, locations and businesses. We need to know what is going on inside such systems, by monitoring the flow of data, making sure that all applications and components are available, reporting error conditions and taking corrective action where possible.

During Part 3 of this workshop there may be occasional references to the Axway (Tumbleweed) Secure Transport, CFT (Cross File Transfer) and BAM monitoring solutions as examples.

Agenda:

8.30am Registration

9.00am Part 1: File Transfer Patterns, Flows, Operations, and Security in the Enterprise
by John Thielens, Chief Architect, Axway (formerly CSO & CTO at Tumbleweed), USA

10.35am Coffee Break (25mins)

11.00am Part 2: File Transfer SLA's, Operations, and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

11.20am Part 3: Infrastructure Architecture, Implementation, and Security for MFT
by Todd MacDonald, CSO & CTO, Information Gateways

12.00pm Finish

Audience:

CTO/CSO, IT Infrastructure Mgr/Team/Architects, IT Security Mgr/Team/Architects, e-Commerce Mgr/Team/Architects, IT Risk Mgr & Auditors, Network Mgr/Team, IT Operations Mgr/Team, IT Consultants, IT Enterprise Architects, Integration Competency Centre, Project Managers, IT Mgmt

PRICE: Your organization may attend free.

REGISTRATION: Please email melissa@ig.com.au or phone +61 2 9496 9496

ENQUIRIES: Please phone Melissa on Sydney +61 2 9496 9496 or email info@ig.com.au