FTP is not collaboration and never will be

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) was a pretty amazing technology when it was introduced ... in 1971! As an application, it served an important purpose through the 1990s, and even today it functions as the basis for some useful, but limited, file-sharing applications. Just don't call what it offers "collaboration"!

But, you say, many companies claim they are using FTP for collaboration. Yes, it's true. Some companies do claim this. But I say that whatever it is they're doing, it's not true collaboration. Here's why:

Out of Control

With an FTP site, one organization (or group) sets it up and "owns" it. But this control by one organization automatically means a lack of control by every other organization. If you're not the company in control of the site, can you really rely on another company to keep the site available so your users don't get frustrated by the process? Do you trust that company to protect your sensitive data? Are you sure the company will hand over log files in the event of a dispute? And if you're the company in control of the site, your partners will certainly have the same issues.

The inability to rely on and trust the site limits what the parties are willing to upload, as well as how much they rely on the site for managing processes. Don't trust the site for sensitive information? Email the file. The site is down when you need it? Email the file. In no time, users don't know what files are on the FTP site, what files are in their inboxes, and which files are the most recent. So they use email to ask for the most recent versions, and pretty soon, the FTP site is dated, useless and then forgotten. Email won and everyone is in a bad place. 

©istockphoto.com/photoclicks

Lack of security

This is one of the biggest problems with FTP sites. As mentioned above, who controls the access rights? How are policies formulated and enforced? In addition, the cumbersome, manual process of applying access rights on an FTP site leads to a carelessness and permissiveness that typically ends up making all files accessible to all system users.

Poor organization

If collaborating on complex projects was really as simple as posting the latest version of a file, a simple application could be built around FTP to do the trick. But most projects aren't that simple, and true collaboration involves workflows with multiple people accessing and updating multiple files in parallel. This makes version control an imperative.

In addition, most FTP sites are like big data bins with an ever-growing number of files and an ever more complicated folder structure. Yet FTP offers little in the way of tagging or access to metadata, and the almost non-existent search capabilities are poor at best, making finding specific information very difficult. So what will busy users do when they access the site and can't quickly find the information they are looking for? Fire off an email.

Low Flow and Industry Woes

In addition to a lack of search capabilities, FTP sites don't easily integrate into an organization's workflow. Unless a company has or hires programmers to create (and then maintain) a lot of custom code, the FTP site is an isolated platform that must be managed manually and that users will easily work around. Need to have your collaboration activity tracked in a project management or customer relationship management system? You're out of luck without a costly custom effort or costly and time consuming double entry.

Also, keep in mind that many industries have specific requirements and workflows, such as legal and regulatory compliance, that impact how they store, protect, and share information. If you're using an FTP site, you are significantly increasing your risk of non-compliance and possible penalties.

A Trail to Nowhere

Whether for internal accounting, compliance, general project management, or dispute resolution, an audit trail is a must. Except for its not very helpful raw log files, FTP offers little help here. Once again, a company that relies on an FTP site for a record of its collaborative interactions with other companies is putting itself at significant risk in the event something goes wrong.

When looking for a file-sharing application as the basis of a collaboration initiative, make sure to investigate whether it follows the FTP model (most do!). If the solution suffers from the FTP weaknesses above -- if it's not neutral, well-organized, secure, useful and auditable -- then keep looking!

Coming up in my next post: "You want to collaborate? Then forget an enterprise solution."

Leigh is the Co-Founder & CEO of Aconex, the world's most widely-used online collaboration platform for the Construction and Engineering industry