Linoma Gets a Handle on Complex Workflows with MFT

June 17, 2014 Alex Woodie

Do you remember when people talked about “e-business” and the huge impact the Internet would have? Well, the predictions came true, and today the Internet is deeply embedded into almost everything companies do. In this new e-business world, managed file transfer (MFT) products have become the go-to tools for getting stuff done. With a recent update, Linoma Software‘s MFT offering can do even more.

MFT tools have always been FTP tools on steroids. In addition to simply moving files, the products often can trigger processes on remote machines, such as kicking off a batch reporting job on a Windows server after receiving a daily dollop of data from an IBM i server. If data is the heart of business, and files are how data gets moved, then MFT tools have become indispensable productivity aids in our data-driven world.

A May update to Linoma’s flagship GoAnywhere Director MFT tool takes automation to new heights. For starters, Linoma gives customers the capability to organize and prioritize batch jobs within their own custom job queues. This allows users to assign a higher priority to certain jobs in order to meet their service level agreements with select trading partners, Linoma says. The job queues are single-threaded, ensuring that file transfers are executed in the order they were submitted.

GoAnywhere Director also gets more data transformation smarts with the 4.6 release. When transferring data from a database table into an XML, CSV, fixed-width, or Microsoft Excel file, GoAnywhere Director can now modify the data to meet a trading partners requirements. It also works the other way around, when importing data from a file or document into a relational database.

Linoma is also giving GoAnywhere Director users a handy new file monitor that will automatically scan SFTP, FTP, and FTPS servers. When a new, updated, or deleted file is detected, the monitor will automatically execute a specific project workflow. Linoma gives users a wizard to guide them through the setup process, including which folders to scan, the file pattern, and how often.

With this release, GoAnywhere can now run remote commands on SSH-enabled servers, such as SFTP servers. The “Execute SSH Commands” task allows administrators to pass command parameters using variables, and the output from the command can be directed to the job log or an output file, Linoma says.

There can be a lot going on in an MFT server, with the preponderance of monitors, job queues, remote commands, and automated file transfers. To help customers stay on top of all this activity, Linoma is introducing a new debugging tool to help spot problems in MFT workflows. The new debugger allows an administrator to step through tasks and view or modify the value of variables after each task has executed, Linoma says.

Security and compliance are part and parcel of what MFT tools do. To that end, the final major new feature in GoAnywhere Director 4.6 is the capability to set up folders that secure data at rest using automatic AES-256 encryption. Linoma says this feature will help customers comply with provisions of PCI, HIPAA, and other regulations.

GoAnywhere Director is the flagship product in Linoma’s GoAnywhere lineup, which also consists of GoAnywhere Services and GoAnywhere Proxy. All three products run on IBM i and other major OSes, and support the FTP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols. GoAnywhere Director was designed primarily for use by larger organizations with internal MFT needs, and offers some additional capabilities not found in GoAnywhere Services, including support for PGP and AES encryption, file conversion capabilities, and the capability to do direct database connections. For more info see the company’s product website at www.goanywheremft.com.