Monday, March 5th the 2013 HIMSS conference exhibition hall opened in the afternoon. 32,000+ healthcare professionals are expected this year in New Orleans this week. During the first day Warner Thomas, President and CEO of Ochsner Health System was the keynote speaker.

The afternoon brought a variety of meetings, ranging from technology analysts, multiple Biscom customers looking to expand their fax operations or inquire about Biscom's capabilities in the secure file transfer area.

Just had a conversation with Mark Gilbert at Gartner a few days ago. That guy knows his stuff! We updated him on Biscom's SharePoint development and that we'll be exhibiting at the Microsoft SharePoint conference this Fall (October 19-22, 2009 in Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas). If you're a Gartner client and have SharePoint questions, want to know who the players are, and where Microsoft is going with this technology, Mark is the guy to talk to!

I just had a talk with Carol Baroudi, Security Research Director at Aberdeen, today. She wrote an excellent, data-driven whitepaper on Secure File Transfer which you can download for free here. Some of you may know Carol from her Internet for Dummies book. She's updating her SFT whitepaper and wanted to find out what's new in the secure file transfer space. Well, lots actually!

It made me think about what we've been up to in the last 6-12 months here at Biscom. We released version 3.1 of Biscom Delivery Server just last month, added a new compliance role, introduced a Chinese language version of BDS, set up a real-time monitoring tool for watching system activity and user transactions, added support for user quotas and user expiration, and have built new modules for automating many of the manual tasks of sending and receiving files.

One topic we covered quite a bit is the cloud. We've been secretly offering a cloud version of BDS for a while now, and will be coming out with an official offering soon. We see a big market for cloud computing, and secure file transfer really fits in nicely as a cloud solution -- no CAPEX, reduced management of physical servers, robust performance, scalable performance as demand increases, and often it's faster because of better availability of bandwidth. We've also designed our cloud solution with our premise solution in mind, so customers can start off with our cloud offering, and easily migrate to a premise solution as their needs change. Moving from cloud to premise, end users will not see any change in the user interface or have to change their existing behavior, and all their files and deliveries will still be available. Companies can also go the other way -- from a premise to cloud solution just as easily! The hybrid approach that we're taking offers a lot of flexibility to our customers. Many want to explore the cloud, but would like an easy alternative if they need it brought in-house, or vice versa. Carol calls it "security as you like it," and I think that's a perfect description of our hybrid model.

Just got a copy of Frank Kenney's latest note on Managed File Transfer called "Key Issues for Managed File Transfer, 2009" published this month. In our last meeting, Frank told me about MFT evolving from a siloed point solution into a broader, more integrated solution that has multiple touch points within an organization's data delivery and management services. In addition to the obvious security requirements, Frank ties in aspects such as monitoring, reporting and auditing, provisioning, and workflow. He also flags a key issue -- companies need visibility into the processes and systems that transport content, and a way to lock that content down during delivery. Frank also discusses adaptability, which he defines as the ability to leverage and connect to existing systems and infrastructure.

Biscom Delivery Server will definitely benefit from this new viewpoint -- we've always believed that tying into existing investments such as LDAP and Active Directory, SAN and NAS storage systems, and common clients like email and Web applications, are critical features of any MFT/SFT solution. And it's about time people looked at secure file transfer as not just a single, discrete function, but as an integrated enabling tool for sharing all sensitive information in this increasingly paranoid world. The demand is not just internal -- companies are feeling greater pressure from their own customers and partners who are wary of how they are sending their personal and confidential data in.

There's a lot more to Frank's piece, so I recommend you request this paper if you're a Gartner client. I'm just scratching the surface of Frank's vision in this blog posting but Frank's paper offers some interesting predictions at what's coming down the MFT road.

We're hosting a webinar with Derek Brink, VP and Research Director of IT Security at Aberdeen Group. Before joining Aberdeen, Derek was VP of Strategy at RSA, and has deep knowledge of security, encryption, and file transfer technologies. Derek will be discussing the growing threat of internal data breaches and what best in class companies are doing to prevent these problems.

So, mark you calendars for March 11th, 2009 from 1-2pm ET and register for this webinar. You'll have the opportunity to talk to Derek and also have access to one of Aberdeen's whitepapers on Secure File Transfer at the end of the webinar.

My first blog and my first blog posting. Actually, Frank Kenney, Research Director at Gartner, paid us an onsite visit today, and suggested that it might be worthwhile for me to start a blog on managed file transfer (aka secure file transfer/intelligent file transfer) and to start evangelizing the concept. As someone who's been quietly evangelizing this for the last 8 years, I guess this is as good as any forum to share news, industry events, and other thoughts on the state of the SFT/MFT market (like the military, tech is full of acronyms).

Biscom Delivery Server (BDS for short, to remain true to the acronym-phillic technology community), is an enterprise Web-based secure file transfer application. (EWBSFTA?) BDS enables people (or machines/automated processes) to send files and messages to each other securely, while tracking every transaction that can later be used for reporting and auditing purposes (think regulatory or compliance requirements). Basically, if you have a file that contains sensitive or confidential information that you can't send over email because it's either too large or you're concerned about other people being able to view it, and FTP, PGP, and other security technologies are too complex for your end users, then you need our product. BDS, above all else, is easy to use!

In a nutshell, here's how it works.

Questions? Comments? I guess I'm opening myself up to the world now, so fire away!