GoAnywhere MFT Reviews

We have a lot of different files that we need to move from in-house to a vendor. While our online banking configuration is real-time, we upload files every morning to cover some aspects of that online banking. Customers also send us files and we pull them off of our secure servers and push them on to our core application vendor. In summary, our use case is almost entirely secure file movement: making sure a file gets from here to there.

We're running this as a cluster with four Linux platforms, two at our on-site and two at our co-location site. Always live. 

Our web development team wants to do source code management for change control of our executables. They are working right now on setting that up. GoAnywhere is the resource that handles movements from test to acceptance, and from acceptance into production. The reason we do that with GoAnywhere is that its logging capabilities, of all of the actions that have been taken, are exquisite, in my opinion, and I've been working in core for 40 years. If anybody wants to know if something did or didn't happen, I can point at a specific line in a job log that says yes or no.

It has also centralized the exchange of data. We used to use an iSeries to run our core operations. There was a job scheduler on it, and we used that to invoke certain GoAnywhere jobs to do motion. Since then, we've converted off of the iSeries, and because GoAnywhere can run on Linux or Windows platforms, we didn't need to do away with it. We could just move it. And we could also move some of the scheduling that we still had to do off of the Series and have GoAnywhere's job scheduler handle it for us. And that's what we did.

We used to use two or three other scripted FTP processes in Robo-FTP, where the operator would double-click on an icon on a desktop to do something. Those all got moved into GoAnywhere.

And its workflow features have very much helped us to eliminate manual processes. That has made our operations a lot smoother. We've had some staff changes. One of those staff changes necessitated our automating a bunch of functions and we're doing so and continuing to improve that automation. In addition, the automation of file transfers has helped to reduce workload by about one-third to one-half of an FTE.

In terms of handling more documents, we set up a lot of file transfers to the core application server of documents created in our bank's branch system. GoAnywhere supported all of that.

All of our internal, as well as external file transfers, are secured now, and GoAnywhere is what was used. We used GoAnywhere when we created the external servers to go from FTP to secure FTP and GoAnywhere supported that transition really easily. We were able to get rid of one internal FTP server after we did that.

The workflow features eliminate the need for custom programs and scripts for file transfers. It handles a lot of different things. We have gone into database programming, to some extent, with a few of our transfers that require a bit of translation between how they are when we pick them up and what they need to look like for where we send them. I'm looking forward to using that ability a little bit more.

Another nice feature is that you can invoke a native program from GoAnywhere. That helps you because you don't have to get fancy with agents. If a native program runs on the server that GoAnywhere is running on, like sed or perl, you can use it,

The intuitiveness of GoAnywhere's user interface is pretty good. The nature of job scheduling is that it can sometimes be really intricate, and difficult to see and understand. We've had learning on it, but the main person who supports it for us digs in and finds documentation that explains how to go about things. We'll then run some test jobs to make sure it works the way we think it's going to, and then we'll use it. In general, it's very intuitive.

When it comes to GoAnywhere's workflow features, there are a couple of areas where I'd like to get a little more consistency. The two aspects of scheduling that we use are scheduled jobs and monitors. And there's cross-capability between the two. We've done some philosophical thinking about when a function should be handled by a monitor and when it should be handled by a scheduled job. When a monitor invokes a project to accomplish something, that gets logged as a job. I've had a little difficulty figuring out where to look to see the monitor's activities itself, to see if the monitor is having a problem. 

For instance, if an account on a secure FTP server has expired, the monitor that uses that account doesn't announce to us that it's having a problem. I want to work with them on this to get it fixed.

Another aspect would be greater visibility into exactly what's happening. But part of that is because we haven't learned how to look at it. I still need to establish some training for my people who support this. We've learned a lot and done a lot with the documentation, which is pretty good, but some formal training would really help tie together a lot of the little tidbits of knowledge in our heads.

We have been using HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT for eight to 10 years.

I don't believe it was any fault of HelpSystems, but the service did stop working for a couple of hours one time. I need to check with them and see if there's a way to restart that says, "Go back and pick up the stuff that didn't run." In this particular instance, the number of things that didn't run was small enough that I could manually look at the schedule screen and figure out what needed to be run. Still, I'm wondering if there's a button I could have pushed that would have taken care of all of that automatically. If that's not a feature they have, that might be something they should implement.

Aside from supporting the occasional new needs, we don't have plans to increase our use of GoAnywhere.

Their tech support is pretty good in responding to us and in helping us to work through any issues that might crop up.

At times we've had some difficulty getting a point across, but I won't assign 100 percent of the responsibility for that to them. Sometimes we won't phrase things correctly. But they don't run away from us. They stick to it and figure out what's going on.

Positive

I didn't do the original deployment. It was done by some engineers who reported to me, and then our web developer did the current implementation of four Linux servers. But the original setup was pretty straightforward.

I have one guy who supports the servers but he rarely has to do anything on them. I also have one web developer who manages all of the jobs. It works out to 1.25 FTEs and that's because they're always looking at ways they can make these projects work better.

GoAnywhere pays for itself easily. It has saved us work and enables us to sleep through the night.

They were open-minded and they did what they could for us, in terms of cost, when we made the transition to GoAnywhere.

And when we migrated from the iSeries to Linux servers, HelpSystems carried forward the startup money that we spent when we originally installed GoAnywhere on the iSeries. We did not have to pay startup fees on the Linux servers. We got credit and that was nice of them.

GoAnywhere was on our radar before we got it. We knew of other options, but after seeing the demo for GoAnywhere, we saw that it does what we needed. I did do a small business case for it that included an examination of other options, but that was a long time ago.

I'm fond of this tool. I don't know how much of an opportunity I'll get to explore other aspects of GoAnywhere's services, but I like what it's doing for us. 

I would 100 percent recommend GoAnywhere to someone else who is looking for solutions in this area.

Our primary use case is file transfer between trading partners and internally to different applications on Windows, Linux, AIX, and iSeries machines.

We are running on Windows. 

In the past, scripts were written in Windows batch files and it was taking lots of time. With GoAnywhere, it is simpler and has more functionality.

The scripts can be written very quickly. With GoAnywhere advanced workflow, I was able to expand the scripting to include more features like emailing the log. I was able to send emails to the business unit that included what file was transferred and at what time.

Our old system used to take five minutes to transfer over 10MB of data. With GoAnywhere, it takes a few seconds. Now I can perform and schedule more FTPs than before and it takes fewer system resources.

The most valuable feature is the Advanced Workflows. It is useful for an open VMS system. With DOS-style batch files, it was long and difficult. With GoAnywhere, however, it was very easy.

With the Advanced Workflows, I can manipulate the date and send the file with an old date to the host. This is a great feature.

It has built-in zip compression as well as encryption features and we do not have to buy additional licenses for this functionality.

I also like the IP Filter list. It can protect the system from outside attacks using Banned IP addresses. It has very good security features.

With Web users, I can use the IP filter. It can be done with each user.

GoAnywhere integrates well with other products.

It sends an email alert if the process fails.

I think that this product has most of the features we require, although the license is expensive.

DNS support needs attention. If the hostname has a dash in it then it does not work. Without a dash being included, it works fine. This is something that needs to updated in the next release.

The shared mailbox support for OWA in the cloud needs to be improved. The shared mailbox does not have a password, and we cannot use it. If there is a password for it then it works well.

if you have host name with example aaa-fgju than in web user ip filter list the name aaa-fgju will not work. If you have host name fghhg1 then it will work. The agent is good feature but license is bit expensive. 

I have been using GoAnywhere MFT for more than six years.

It is very stable. We never experience downtime, exept during upgrades.

Scalability is very good. I saw only this level with high availability solutions.

Technical support is excellent. They are always willing to help and want to resolve the issue ASAP.

Prior to GoAnywhere, we used FTP Serv-U and FTP Voyager. FTP Voyager is a free product but the functionality is very limited. It was not able to meet our business requirements. As technology changes, FTP Voyager does not have good features for new technology.

It also has high CPU utilization because it was written for workstation OS. The interface for FTP Voyager was simple but very functionality-wise, it was too basic. There were lots of restrictions while using it.

 Everything was written manually. Lots of the time, we were not able to justify business needs with FTP Voyager. We needed a product that serves our business needs and found that GoAnywhere was the perfect one for us.

The initial setup was simple. It took only one hour to set up the product.

The product was implemented in-house.

It saves lots of time in terms of administration. With is product, I can perform other duties and it requires less intervention on a daily basis.

Licensing can be expensive and it depends upon which features you want to buy. If the license were cheaper then we would buy more features.

I have used other vendors and found that GoAnywhere was the winner in terms of price and our business requirements. In our case, it meets all of the business requirements.

This suitability of this product depends on business requirements.

For anybody who is implementing this product, I would suggest taking some time to learn Advanced Workflows because it is complex.

It is a file transfer solution. We have different scenarios for different sectors, like banking and financial sectors. Customers want to move from traditional SMTP servers to enterprise solutions with logs and monitoring features.

The user interface is simple. We can automate the solution. We can deploy the product in different kinds of infrastructure. We can do a lot with the product in automation. We can automate it for file transformation.

The security features must be updated regularly. The newer versions must be released sooner. The solution must add new features at least every year. The solution must provide integration with SSO.

I have been using the solution for around three years.

The tool is quite stable.

The tool is scalable. Around 30 people are using the product in my organization.

The technical support team provides delayed solutions.

Neutral

The initial setup is easy. The tool is very easy to deploy and use. We deploy the solution for many clients and have used many cloud providers. The time taken for deployment depends on the type of deployment.

The product is not cheap, but it is not expensive. The price depends on the modules. The solution is worth the money.

My recommendation depends on the customers’ requirements and how they transfer files in their organization. Some organizations do data transfer only over email. Compared to its competitors, the tool provides good features. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We are a partner of HelpSystems. They have a branch office in Argentina for all Latin American countries, and we work with them.

We use this solution to connect internet applications that traditionally are isolated. Instead of trying to build very costly interfaces or things like that, we send information from one app to the other app in the easiest but the most secure way possible. We just use MFT, and it does the work for us, but recently, we are being asked to connect not just internal applications but also external web services for government or other regulatory companies. With this type of solution, we are able to integrate not just the internal apps but also the external services. This is pretty much what we do with this solution.

Its speed is the most valuable because every integration used to take months with old SOA tools, integration buses, and that type of stuff. Now, we do integrations in a matter of days.

Security is another valuable thing because every step in the workflow has an audit trace, which is great. This also brings a lot of confidence in automating business process workflows through this type of solution.

Its user interface can be improved. The current user interface is a little basic for some of the use cases. We have to use an external component to enhance it. When we need a more appealing user interface, we use an additional component, and that works okay.

I have been using this solution for around four years.

Its stability is very high because it is installed in a cluster. When used this way, it is pretty stable. It uses a lot of cluster implementation, and the business processes start to be very critical.

Scalability is associated with the hardware. This solution is based on Java technology, so it is able to scale both vertically and horizontally. It has good scalability. 

At this time, we've got two nodes. If we need more, we can add more components. We are not a very big company. So, at this time, it is not an issue for us. If we grow or have more integrations, we would need the scalability there, and I am not afraid of that.

This tool is used to automate processes. It doesn't handle end users. We are automating about 10 to 20 business processes that affect different kinds of users. About 100 to 150 users get to benefit from those automations. They are not necessarily direct users of this solution.

We receive direct support from HelpSystems. Their support is good. I would rate them a nine out of ten. A few cases were handled by the regional team. For a few cases, we received support from their first-level team.

The initial setup was easy. The provider has a lot of knowledge, which made it easy. The deployment is an ongoing process. The initial installation took about one month or so, and the training and being skilled took maybe one or two months more. Since then, the need for automation and newer workflows is there all the time.

It is a good solution, but of course, you need to have the knowledge to be able to automate very quickly. 

I would rate HelpSystems GoAnywhere MFT a nine out of ten.

The primary use for GoAnywhere MFT (Managed File Transfer) is to provide control for file transfers.  

Until now, I think the solution very good for me and my clients. If I had to name one thing that I think should be improved, I think it is that there are quite a lot of features and we do not use all of them. So a thing that could be done to improve this situation is maybe for HelpSystems to offer a lite version that also costs a bit less.  

It has only been a couple of weeks now that we have rolled out the product in our company. We did the product selection a few months ago and then we started on a test license. I would guess we have been using it as a company for about four weeks.  

From our experience up until now, I think the product is both stable and scalable.  

We currently have somewhere between a minimum of five and a maximum of ten users. We may be expanding that in the future, but not in the coming year or so. We do plan to continue to use the product.  

For the most part, we have been in a test evaluation phase and we have not needed to use the technical support until now.  

This is actually the first product of this type that I am using.  

I think that GoAnywhere is moderately complex as far as the initial setup. It is quite manageable for our experienced IT employees. We deploy it just by using people who are in our software development team. There is a consultant assigned to our team who could help us if we wanted to use their services, but until now it has gone quite well and we have not had to engage that level of support. We can ask for support if we want it. We just have not had to up until now.  

The cost of the product is a one-time licensing.  

I think it is a bit cheaper than Axway MFT (part of the AMPLIFY platform), but not by much. It could be cheaper if a few of the features that we are not using — and that most of our customers do not use — could be left out.  

I recommend this product for other users who wants to start using it, and we do recommend it all the time.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as an eight-out-of-ten. To improve it in order to rate it higher, it would have to be cheaper. To accomplish that HelpSystems could consider reorganizing the product in a more modular way. In that way, we could just make the solution fit to particular needs and pay for what is used. For most situations, we just need a few small modules instead of the entire solution in one big chunk.  

This is used in a virtual environment where a number of customers establish a requirement to send or receive files. The files are sent using SFTP and Zip with projects providing details to customers on when and what was sent. We send these files internally or externally. Other things the solution is used for is cleaning up data from sent or received files for projects and customers. The environment consists of Windows and Linux systems to which each customer presents the data to send or import.

The use of this product has helped improve our organization and its ability to send or receive. It has done this by allowing us to remove any homegrown process and centralize needed actions. It has helped consolidate these areas of action or homegrown processes to one location in a way that is workflow based. This workflow and central location of the process allows us to hinge at one area to understand where or what any issue or concern may be. Doing this can help or allow us to find areas to be resolved, if needed, or establish new ways of providing a product.  

I have found that the workflow process has a easy to use or viewable section which is key to this product. You have the ability to create the steps in a viewable, actionable area. Review these steps and set them up in an order that makes sense to the process you need. Along with this ease of viewing and ability to move things around you can validate those actions by placing them in a debug state. Here you can view and find your issues or concerns as the workflow and view are an asset for this product and valuable.

In using this product, I have not found many areas of the product or service that need to be completely improved. However, with any product, improvement of a service or product can always be reviewed. If one were to look to improve it:

1. Continue to look forward and listen to its customers. 
2. Improvement in support or product relies on being ingenious, supportive, and listening to its customer base. 

I have been using this solution for over a year.

The organization has ways to listen to its customers and providing that feedback is working as the company listens and provides support as applicable.

Yes, I used a homegrown software.