Integration Options - FTP, MFT, API Led

Introduction

This is the era of digital technologies and coming years will continue to dominate the same. Current digital transformation and System integration are based on such technologies. Among all these, one of the old and reliable integration based on file transfer does not come as first choice but at the same time it cannot be ignored. Still File Transfer based integration is one of the followed pattern in large enterprises for critical business process fulfillment. During a large transformation program it always becomes a difficult discussion point to choose between FTP, MFT or if such integration can be converted to API based or Service invocation based such as API Led Integration.

This document compares the three (FTP, Manager File Transfer & API Led) and provided key factors to decide among them.  

Comparative Analysis of FTP, MFT and API Led Integration

Key Requirement Analysis to decide among FTP/MFT/API

Detailed analysis of below listed parameters must be completed before deciding the technology/pattern

• Security and Compliance – What level of security and compliance is required
• Audits with Logs and Reporting & Dashboard requirement – is it required
• Reliability – How critical the data is and what level of reliability is required
• Administration & Management – What are the administrative and management requirement: Re-submission, Real-time monitoring, Pause & Resume etc.
• File content transformation. Is it required to transform the content if a large file, generate new file before sending it to target location? If yes, listed factors are recommended to be considered:

- Transformation is technically doable at middleware but it’s not a common practice for large files.  

- For such transformation, platform resources will be heavily consumed. Platform capacity needs to be planned in advance and must be enabled for dynamic scale up to meet the processing power.

- Insufficient platform resource during scheduled file transfer will result into SLA breach and possible downtime for other projects.

• Volumetric – What is the business volumetric for file transfer

- Size of the file

- Transfer Frequency

• One to Many transfer: Single file form source to be transferred to multiple Target systems
• Error Handling with Re-submission feature. It must be designed for guaranteed delivery in case of disaster situation, connectivity failure or platform failure

- Enough forecast of temporary storage – required to hold the file may be up to 2 weeks and enable re-submission.

 Decision Factors for Applicable Tool

There are multiple tools available which support FTP, MFT and API Led Integration. Mulesoft/Dell Boomi are the leading tool for API Led integration. Since Mule has FTP connector, it can be used for FTP based requirements as well. For MFT requirements, other tools can be evaluated. Summary points:

• API Led: Mulesoft/DellBoomi like tools are chosen
• FTP based requirements: Most of the integration platform support inbuilt FTP Adapter/Connector and can be used for such requirements  Specially, if the file transfer based integration is supposed to an intermediate or temporary solution as part of strategy, inbuilt FTP adapters can be leveraged to fulfill such requirements but only if its shortcomings are well within acceptable limit.
• With single PUT operation it’s recommended to transfer file up to 4GB
• MFT Requirements: It may be the case that, strategic Enterprise integration platform like Mulesoft or Dell Boomi does not support all MFT features, though it comes with inbuilt FTP adaptor. Fro example, Mulesoft has partnered with certified third party providers like Thru MFT connector – “Thru OpiPaaS”. If MFT features are required, it’s recommended to do a MFT tool evaluation of Thru or any other. There are other MFT tool offered form leading product vendors which should be considered for evaluation to decide strategic MFT tool.

-       Pramod Kumar, pramod200@gmail.com , www.garudax.id/in/pramod200