Globalscape EFT Reviews

We have lots of data coming in from or going to financial institutions like banks, including payments and different types of transactions. Any client can connect to GlobalSCAPE to retrieve their files and data. We also go to their servers and pick data. We have a lot of clients, vendors, and partners that share data for different applications. Most of the data goes through SFTP, which is a protected protocol.

Our main production server is on-prem. The version of Globalscape that we are testing right now, version 8, is on the cloud in Azure.

Our SFTP team uses this as the main platform to do file transfers. As a result, Globalscape helps with operations, maintenance, security, and advanced tasks that we accomplish through the platform.

We have also been able to move a lot of jobs from batch and PowerShell scripts, as well as C++ and some other programming languages. It has helped, to some degree, to remove dependency on other methods. The impact has been positive because things are more centralized and better organized.

The automation of file transfers has increased our efficiency and effectiveness a lot, as they would with any other MFT system. It enables you to automate any processes that you might otherwise have to do manually. That reduces workload. Otherwise, you would have to do things through scripts or manually. There are still some things being done manually by different business teams, but a lot of it has been automated. We also need fewer programming resources now.

We have about 300 jobs and I would estimate that Globalscape saves 40 hours per week, in total.

The most valuable feature is the automation engine because it allows you to script or program and it has lots of different features and options. It's something like an IDE for programmers, where they can add variables, arrays, loops, et cetera. It has much more functionality than the advanced rules component, which only has limited options. You can use automated scripts, such as those built with PowerShell, in GlobalSCAPE, as well as scripts that you build in Globalscape.

It's also very important that it is designed specifically for Windows because our servers are Windows and everything that we do is in Windows. Of course, we have a few Linux servers and even an SFTP server, but it's very important to be in the Windows space.

In addition, we use it to automate the submission of regulatory documentation and that is another very important functionality for us.

The solution’s centralized platform for the management of file transfer operations is good, although improvements could be made to it.

Another area for improvement is the ARM (Auditing and Reporting Module) database, in terms of accuracy and the data being logged. 

And when it comes to functionality, there could be more descriptive instructions for various functions or actions.

Finally, I would like to see more advanced features for the alerting.

I have been using Globalscape Managed File Transfer for almost three years.

The stability of the solution is medium. There could be some improvements.

It's scalable.

We have hundreds of internal staff members who rely on Globalscape to make those files available to them for their processes. We also have hundreds of external clients, vendors, and partners. It is definitely used extensively.

We used PowerShell scripts and batch scripts. We still have them, but we didn't have an MFT.

I was part of the deployment on the dev side for the cloud, but not for the main production instance. The part I was involved with was medium, between simple and complex. It took a few weeks.

The maintenance load is average. I take care of it. We have another engineer on the SFTP team but I am the one who mainly maintains and operates the SFTP environment.

For the deployment I was involved in we did it in-house, but we did ask some questions regarding the gateway server and the ARM database. We consulted with Globalscape support on a couple of questions we needed help with.

Our experience with them was good.

We do see a return on investment every single year. These are very critical processes. If a single file is missing, it could cause damage of $70,000, $80,000, or even $100,000. It's very important to have a robust system and that we can do advanced functions.

The on-prem licensing is very good. It's a perpetual license and I would advise others to purchase that license. That way, you don't have to pay yearly.

There are modules that you have to purchase, such as the ARM database module, and the security module, depending on what you need. Those modules increase the perpetual license's cost. There is also support which comes at an additional cost. If you purchase the perpetual license, that means you own that version, and if you want support or if you want to be able to update it, then you have to buy the premium support package, and there are a couple of tiers.

The way we secure sensitive data in Globalscape MFT is through Active Directory's RBAC, its role-based access control. But in part, we do it through Globalscape too, because we have supervisory accounts where internal people can access the data through SFTP accounts that go through Globalscape.

Overall, it is a good solution. Just make sure that it matches your auditing requirements.

I work for a local government, which is a pretty big organization as there are a lot of cities within the county. We do the file transfers for the county. It started off with SFTP only and then we managed to integrate our internal file transfers and everything else. From there, it has grown a lot more. We had one site originally, and now we're up to seven FTP sites.

We mostly use the software to interact with the outside world. Anything that comes in or goes out of our organization goes through our servers. Internally, because we have a lot of different systems, including mainframe, AIX, et cetera, and some systems don't speak to each other. For example, the mainframe doesn't have SFTP capabilities to communicate with AIX. We are the system in the middle that is involved in those transactions. For example, the mainframe will push out a file to us and then we will use or create a Globalscape script to push out that file to whichever server or file share it needs to go to.

The solution helps us a lot. If we didn't have it, and instead had a plain FTP solution, that would require a lot of other people to do extra tasks, including programming, to get files from point A to point B in a certain way. It results in huge time savings for our organization because a lot of the work is done by Globalscape, making it seamless to everybody else. If we didn't have the software, it would definitely require a lot of programmers to do a lot of work to create programs to get things done. Having a programmer write a program takes a long time. With Globalscape, all of that is managed in the background.

It also automates the submission of regulatory documentation. We have dozens of jobs that send out information on a weekly and monthly basis. It definitely makes it easy to send that data out to the people who require it at a specific time. It's really a set-it-and-forget-it, which is great. You set up a timed event or an ad hoc event that depends on when a file is uploaded. We set up a schedule and that was it. We don't have to tinker with it unless there's a change in a remote server or a server path.

It has reduced our workload. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, the quantity of data transfers has increased enormously mostly because we had to shift from in-office, paper delivery to an almost 100 percent online presence. Initially, there was a lot of work creating accounts and setting up a lot of new processes, but thankfully the software allowed us to do that. And it has been robust enough to handle the amount of data that we have needed to transfer on a daily basis. It does save us a lot of time.

Globalscape has a lot of good features. It's pretty easy to manage, once you understand the product and how it works.

The ability to map users to a virtual folder is excellent because server storage space is expensive compared to NAS or other types of storage solutions. Being able to map a user's home folder to a network location that is not in the home folder is a major advantage. There is a lot of data that we are not able to store on our servers because our servers are only transitory. The files do get deleted, as part of our rules, because otherwise we would run out of space.

The other thing is that the Advanced Workflow Engine it comes with is brilliant because it allows us to create scripts and perform behind-the-scenes jobs that would otherwise require a third-party solution. For example, somebody wanted a list of the emails of users who work for our organization. Using that tool, we were able to grab the information from Active Directory, process it, create a ZIP file, and then push it out to the person who needed it. That type of function generally does not exist in a plain FTP solution. You would have to create a special code on the outside to get all that other stuff done in the background. With Globalscape, we can get all of that done in one package.

In addition, the reporting is excellent. They keep on augmenting the software with more features for security and compliance when it comes to integration with third-party products, of course, but it also has the ability to scan files for viruses as they come in and go out, which is a great feature.

Globalscape also secures sensitive data inside our network so that only verified users have access. Whenever somebody asks for an account, we always find out what the data is for. Based on that, it's either stored locally on our servers or in a secure network location that is behind firewalls. Unless you have access, there's no way you can get access to those files. Because we are a local government, we also have to deal with police files and Corrections Department data. And of course, a lot of employee data goes through our servers, including Social Security numbers. That's very sensitive information and we make sure that data is delivered securely or kept in a secure location. Having the data secured inside our network is definitely important to us. That is why we host it internally. Although we're migrating stuff to the cloud, having this set up locally allows us to maintain security compliance.

Our security office is satisfied with the work that we do and the capabilities that we have for ensuring that all the data that gets transferred to us is clean. We cannot afford to have a virus come in and hit us randomly over the network.

Another nice feature is the centralized platform for the management of file transfer operations. It's very simple to use and everything is in one place. As long as you know what you're doing, it's pretty straightforward. Creating user accounts, virtual folders, and jobs are all very straightforward.

There is only one thing that they need to figure out, as of my last conversation with their engineers. There are two ways to install Globalscape: as a standalone server or as a high-availability server, either Active-Active or Active-Standby. We are currently using standalone servers. That means if we want to upgrade the software, I shut down one of the two back-end servers, upgrade the software, make sure everything is correct, and then turn traffic back on to that one. I then proceed to upgrade the second server. With their high-availability solution, that is not a possibility. Both servers have to be shut down to perform the upgrade. We're a 24/7 shop. We don't have a window where we can have downtime. If we have to shut down both servers, that shuts down FTP, period, and we're down. We cannot be down, at all.

Our solution is to have two primary active nodes and two nodes in standby. Our upgrade path is going to be going from two standalone to two high-availability servers, with two additional servers on the back end just sitting there doing nothing, so when the time comes that we have to upgrade, we will be able to shut down the main high-availability cluster, perform the upgrade, and then switch back. That's a pain. And that's the only thing that could be improved, because once we set up the high-availability version, it's going to be a little more tedious to do a software upgrade.

As time goes on, it's very important to keep the software as up-to-date as possible because there are enhancements for security protocols that they've included. The lack of ability to upgrade would be a showstopper for us if we were running in the minimal high-availability mode.

Having high availability is also important because it's cheaper for licenses and it's easier to manage those servers, versus two standalone servers. But that makes our upgrade path the only downside.

As an organization, we've been using Globalscape Managed File Transfer for longer than I've been managing it, and I've been managing it for over five years. 

It's very stable. We rarely have any issues with the software. We've had minor bumps only when performing upgrades. And those weren't the fault of Globalscape. They were the result of poor programming on our end. 

It's pretty self-sufficient and there isn't much we need to do to it, and that saves us a lot of time. We don't have to go in there every day and make sure everything is running or run reports to see if there are any jobs that have failed. That rarely happens.

We could scale it a lot more than we have. It is easy to add more servers. If our load were to increase, it would be pretty simple to add an additional server to the environment and have it handle the additional traffic. Scaling it is probably one of the easiest things to do. You just spin up another server, install the software, and have everything synchronized and you're up and running.

We have just about all of the modules that Globalscape offers and have used all of their features to their full potential.

We don't have any bottlenecks currently. If that did become an issue, we could easily add an additional server and be done.

Their technical support has been great. I've contacted them during business hours as well as after business hours when we have had a problem after-hours. They have been able to resolve the problems very quickly, for the most part.

Sometimes, there are problems that level-one support is not able to resolve and they will move it up quickly to the next level, without us having to wait for a long time. I can't complain about the support that they've provided to us.

There is a learning curve when it comes to using Globalscape Managed File Transfer, but when we have run into issues, their support team has been great in getting us the answers that we need. When we get a strange request that we are not sure how to do, they're able to fill in the gaps. They have all that knowledge and have worked with other companies that have had those issues before.

We had people logging in using a domain/username, but Globalscape doesn't require that. We had an issue with that and I contacted their support. They looked at the issue and they were able to provide a fix for it immediately.

Positive

I wasn't here for the initial setup of the solution, but I was here when we went from one server on one box to having two load-balanced servers. I did all that migration, moving that SFTP server to the new environment and collapsing our internal FTP.

Moving the first server, the SFTP, was easy, because it was a matter of moving one backup configuration and restoring it on a new box. We did hire them for consulting on the setup to make sure that we were able to do high-availability. 

Collapsing our internal FTP was interesting because that was running on Microsoft FTP. It was a "landfill." People dropped files and forgot that they were there and cleaning up that mess was a little bit of work, but that was just because of the way it was set up. I was able to manage the migration of all of that stuff over to the Globalscape infrastructure. Cleaning the data and making sure we kept the accounts we needed to keep was a task we had to do. Once we had it all set up, we were able to set up the site for our internal FTP, which is now both internal and external, and move everything over to the new server. It took a little while to clean up, but on the Globalscape side it was pretty straightforward.

As far as maintaining the solution goes, we currently have two people involved.

Globalscape is not cheap, but you get what you pay for. The cost is worth the value of the product. What you're getting is a good, stable solution that does a lot. We don't run the basic version, we run the full enterprise version of the software that has all the bells and whistles. It has all the features that we need and the pricing is fair, given what offers. I think it's a pretty good deal.

We could go with something cheaper, but then we might not get all the updates that we need or all the additional stuff that they're constantly innovating into the product. That's a lot of value added. The analogy would be if Windows stayed with Windows NT, for instance. That would not be good. Windows keeps on moving, progressing, and making things better, and so does Globalscape. Globalscape looks at what customers need and, based on that, they keep on adding features and functions that are useful and that make our jobs a lot easier and provide a lot more automation.

I believe our organization did evaluate other options. I think they chose Globalscape because of the automated features it has available. A lot of the other solutions are just plain FTP servers. Back then, they didn't do a lot of automation. A lot of them are now trying to add those features because they see them as necessary for a lot of businesses. Back then, Globalscape was one of the very few companies that had that type of integration.

On my own, I've demoed a few of them and they're not as straightforward as Globalscape. Of course, I'm used to Globalscape, but they don't have a lot of the bells and whistles that Globalscape has.

It's not that important that it's designed for Windows because we work with different systems. But it is nice that it is designed for Windows because it's easier to manage than using the command line or relying on different versions of Linux. Windows is a more standardized platform and we know it will operate in a certain fashion. With other OSs, it would be a lot more expensive or a lot more challenging. With Linux, there are so many variants out there that it's impossible to say they're all standard. It might work perfectly on one but not work on another one. Having Globalscape on Windows is great because it's used everywhere and easily manageable. It's a good pairing.

If it weren't for Globalscape's automations, it would be a lot more difficult to use. It has been a blessing to have those features available to us to make our jobs a lot easier.

It is a versatile tool, that enables seamless and secure daily report exchange between business partners. It can access partner systems, locate CSV reports, and transfer them to various global locations. It goes beyond basic file transfer, supporting server-to-server, server-to-client, and client-to-client transfers for enhanced collaboration. Unlike email limitations, it allows large file transfers, even up to 500 GB, by generating shareable links similar to Google Drive.

It is a global-scale solution that came into prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling secure file automation for remote work.

It allows location-agnostic data sharing, enhancing productivity and reducing reliance on physical exchanges. It bolsters security with features like Data Loss Prevention and seamless integration with DLP for a safe and compliant environment which enables real-time document sharing and control over file actions. It also offers PGP encryption for secure file transfers, ensuring sensitive data remains protected.

It could improve its operations by incorporating real-time collaboration features like those offered by platforms such as Microsoft OneDrive and Office 365. These features include tracking changes, timestamps, and edit history when multiple users work on a file, going beyond basic downloading and uploading.

I have been working with it for four years.

It offers good stability capabilities.

It is highly scalable, offering flexibility in expanding your resources. You can start with a few lines and easily increase them as needed. It allows you to adapt your resources based on your current requirements and seamlessly scale up when necessary, ensuring that your system can handle increased demands.

Initially, I had concerns about its technical support due to the time zone difference with the US-based team, resulting in slow responses from Nigeria. However, in the past year, they introduced an Indian support team working within our time zone, leading to faster responses during our working hours. This change significantly improved the support experience, positively impacting my perception of their support services.

Neutral

The initial setup was easy.

It offers excellent value and its pricing is straightforward, making it easy to acquire, set up, and use. While there are some areas where it could improve, such as GUI and collaboration features, the product's overall cost-effectiveness stands out.

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

It is easy to set up, stable, and secure. They have good customer support.

Previously, we had multiple tools for file transfer. With GlobalSCAPE, we can meet all the business requirements. It has multiple options like folder monitoring and scheduled jobs that make it a real time file transfer solution.

It is great tool. GlobalSCAPE needs to provide training or seminars to show its capability to customers.

We have not had any stability problems until now. It is very stable.

We had no issues with scalability.

I would give technical support a rating of 10/10. They are very knowledgeable.

We have used many solutions, mostly scripts, which are hard to edit and debug.

The setup was very straightforward. Setting up basic file transfers is very easy. Customizing advanced workflows is complex and requires more experience.

They offer fair pricing with all the capabilities.

We did look at alternatives, but I cannot name them.

It is wonderful application which can take care of your file transfer load. There is no need to monitor it daily. It is very stable.