Sixty-three percent of IT professionals are frustrated with current file transfer processes and 40% believe manual file transfer processes are inefficient, according to a survey conducted by business software company Ipswitch.
When asked to relate file transfer processes to activities generally seen as unpleasant, 61% of respondents said manual file transfer was as enjoyable sitting in traffic.
Twenty-two percent of respondents said current file transfer issues prevented them from providing customer assistance more quickly.
"Ipswitch sees the market moving more towards systems with secure, manageable, scalable file transfer, at its core, of course," said said Ken Allen, Product Marketing Director at Ipswitch, via email. "But manual file transfer is more than just file transfer. Around that core, we see the need for tightly integrated transfer automation that allows IT to manage the exchange of any volume of transfers, while efficiently processing files to prepare them for the next step in a business process."
Thirty-five percent cited lost productivity as a significant side effect of file transfer processes, and nearly 32% had concerns over the security and potential for data loss.
"The challenge in getting managed file technology right is balancing the needs of collaborative file sharing versus integrated file-based system-to-system integration," said Allen. "End users demand simple file sharing solutions that are quick to get started while IT demands compliance to corporate and regulatory security standards. It's easy to focus on one end of this while ignoring the other."
To gather data for this report, Ipswitch conducted a survey of more than 100 IT professionals.
