Aspera Managed File Transfer Reviews

We have an office in China, and we wanted to transfer data from China to the UK. We have an office in the UK as well.

We were able to effectively nullify the China firewall since the China firewall was disrupting our data transfer. With Aspera, it was really good. We were able to utilize the full line bandwidth or 80% of the bandwidth. Let's say if I have a 100 Mbps line, I would be able to use close to 80 Mbps speed. We found no other equivalent solution. The only other option was to go with the SD-WAN solution, which was very expensive. Since we were using Aspera, it saved us a lot of costs.

There are other products of Aspera which come as add-ons, however, we haven't purchased those, like report generation, since that was not our requirement. The features we needed were included in the basic edition, and that works for us. If there is any failure in the data transfer and it can automatically detect and reinitiate it, that would be great.

We have been using it for more than five years.

For file transfer between China and outside China, it is nine out of ten.

It's scalable, but, again, as I've mentioned, there are a lot of modules that come with Aspera, however, we didn't go for them. 

Their customer service is responsive. There was not much of a problem with the product, so I couldn't recall any delays. During installation, the support was good, and we were able to install it successfully.

Positive

We did try another file transfer solution, however, they were not as effective as Aspera. So we had to go with Aspera. They were cheaper, yet they did not provide the core functionality of getting past the China firewall.

We had support from IBM vendors, so it was not much of a challenge. We were able to install it easily.

There were just two people from the vendor, I guess.

The licensing is perpetual and AMC. We keep renewing AMC. It was close to $10,000 to $20,000. 

We didn't get a chance to find any other product that offers the same functionality, so I can't compare.

For our requirements, IBM Aspera fit very well into the budget. It's subjective. I'd rate it nine out of ten. 

If you want to do a file transfer between two countries, and one is not China, then you have other more affordable options. However, if you want to move data in and out of China to the US, Europe, India, or any other location, you may have to go with Aspera. 

The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is that it's an incredibly fast protocol, you can use all the bandwidth available. If I need to send large amounts of data this is the fastest protocol on the market. I have been using it for some minor projects and it is very powerful.

Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand.

The best way to propose a suite is to have an integrated suite where the customer could choose to license part of it. This solution could be one solution not two choices between 10 or 12 different solutions. The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is the communication protocol, which is fast. There are a lot of different clients that are offering features related to these fast protocols. It's possible to create one unique suite that can handle this base protocol. It will be quite easy to propose to the customers.

I have used Aspera Managed File Transfer within the past 12 months.

Aspera Managed File Transfer is stable.

I have found Aspera Managed File Transfer to be scalable.

Managed File Transfer was a new solution acquired by Aspera, similar to Sterling. After the purchases by IBM, and during the integration of the Aspera support into the IBM support, we had some issues related to responsibilities. However, this was resolved quite quickly.

I have previously used Sterling Commerce.

Aspera Managed File Transfer is oriented to the string to send large file sizes in order to be readable or accessible in real-time on phones or other devices. For example,  streaming movies, such as Netflix. It's not oriented well to do the file transfers. For the file transfer, we consider when I can handle the file in batch mode. I can send the file and it's not necessary to be received in real-time. This is the main difference, For streaming, I cannot propose Aspera Managed File Transfer and for file transfer, I would propose Sterling Commerce.

Aspera Managed File Transfer is not an inexpensive solution. I am not aware of many competitors to determine how affordable the price is overall.

I would recommend Aspera Managed File Transfer depending on the use case. With Sterling Commerce, we can cover each managed file transfer use case. With Aspera Managed File Transfer, the use case has to be related particularly to business. When I have a large amount of data to send and receive with a strict SLA, such as sending three-gigabyte files in less than 30 minutes it works well. However, in other use cases, I prefer Sterling Commerce.

I rate Aspera Managed File Transfer a seven out of ten.

Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites with lower bandwidth and in less time.

The solution's pricing calculation needs revision to be more competitive

I have been using Aspera Managed File Transfer for ten years.

Aspera Managed File Transfer is a stable solution.

Aspera Managed File Transfer is easy to deploy.

Aspera Managed File Transfer has superior technology.

Overall, I rate Aspera Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case of the product was for video file transfers and large binary file transfers. We are partners of Aspera and I'm the CTO of our company. 

I would say that the user interface was a good feature, and the ability to set up multiple file transfer jobs was also an asset.

The software licensing pricing model could be improved and simplified with portability. I'd also like to see the ability to upgrade software licenses. Once you buy that software license, you're done. If you buy a license for 10 miles an hour, you want to get 20 miles an hour. That means you need to buy a 20 mile an hour license because you can't add 10 miles an hour to the 10 mile an hour license. What I'd like to see is the ability to increase, to add capacity to an existing license. I'd also like to see a simple, quick start wizard because the implementation is not easy.

I used this solution for about three months. 

Deployment of the product is somewhat complex and it was also difficult to get support, very difficult to get support. I was never able to get it running particularly well. I took a couple of months to try and make it work and I couldn't do it. I attempted to use a consultant. We had two or three people trying to use the solution. 

From my experience, I think the solution requires details, network engineering and firewall admin support. I think a more simple deployment and better technical support would make a big difference.