The exchange of goods and services defines trading partner relationships, but the exchange of information makes it happen. Simply passing data back and forth can be complex enough when dealing with hundreds or possibly thousands of trading partners, but the issues that companies must deal with extend beyond the mechanics of transferring data from one place to another.

Various transport mechanisms, such as email, instant messaging and FTP, have been used to share these types of files between and within companies, but the traditional communication methods suffer from glaring security, manageability and auditing gaps. In a business environment governed by increasingly stringent regulations and consumer demands for privacy, bridging those gaps, while still ensuring the necessary flow of information among trading partners and within the organization, has become critically important. In addition to examining these business requirements, this white paper discusses a way to fulfill them that usually goes by the name of Managed File Transfer (MFT).