Dave Ferris from Ferris Research posting some interesting thoughts in his blog about the importance of transferring files over FTP protocol.
“The normal way of transferring files is by email, or, after that, by instant messaging. For small files, up to say 5MB or so, these vehicles are fine. Above that, file size and transfer times create problems.
Ignoring some of the niceties, use of FTP, the file transfer protocol, is the main alternative. FTP use is thus healthy, and growing.
Home-grown solutions dominate today’s market. Some of the main vendors of packaged FTP technology are Ipswitch, Tumbleweed, and Sterling.”
I absolutely agree with Dave that efficiency of FTP is a huge benefit over relying on email & IM to share huge files (and equally as valuable for sharing a large number of smaller files).
However, I think that the additional security benefits of sharing files over encrypted SSL and SSH protocols makes them even better options…. And I predict that we’ll absolutely see a continued shift away from unencrypted FTP and increased adoption of encrypted protocols like SSL and SSH.

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