A recent article was published on USA Today that covered a well-known vendor for file transfer services and also mentioned several others within this space. Obviously, I read this with great interest, but was initially dismayed that LeapFILE was not even mentioned, even though I had a quick chat with the reporter who wrote this article when he was doing his research. After re-reading it again, however, I am now glad that we're not lumped into the same category with these other sites because I came to realize that the context for this article isn't relevant to the type of customers we serve: businesses.

The distinction between the needs of an individual consumer and those of a business are vastly different. I wrote a previous post that covered the differences between consumer versus business file transfer as well as another that talked about the fallacies of free file hosting services for business use, but I think it's worth further clarifying. In the hopes of trying to be creative, I'll use a car analogy.

All cars help you get from point A to point B...if that's all you want to do, then any car will do. However, if you need to haul a ton of stuff such as large furniture, then a sub-compact is out of the question. Similarly, if you are environmentally-conscious and have an economical bent (such as my wife), then you think all gas-guzzling SUVs should be taken off the roads and turned into scrap metal and recycled. A Smart car will not fit a family of six and a speed junkie will not be happy with a '92 Toyota Previa. And no one should get a car from GM.

The point is that business users and IT managers at companies need much more than what a lot of these free file transfer sites offer, such as the ability to track all transfers for auditing purposes, the assurance that the site will not go down, and the ability for IT managers to centrally manage and provision user accounts with direct integration to their active directory server. While many file transfer sites allow you to send a file from point A to point B, there are other considerations to be had. I highly doubt the company that built it's file transfer site over a weekend as mentioned in the USA Today article is capable of meeting the complex needs of a business that is governed by regulations to protect the privacy of their clients data.

So, if you are a business user or IT manager considering a file transfer solution, do yourself a favor and don't get a lemon.