What’s the Right File Transfer Automation Approach Based on Your IT Environment

When data is all over the place, a hybrid managed file transfer system could help organizations handle that complexity.

Your data lives everywhere. On-premises servers, private clouds, multiple public clouds, edge locations—welcome to the distributed enterprise reality.

The traditional approach for how to handle this dispersed data situation? Pick a side. Go all-in on cloud MFT (and watch your on-premises teams revolt). Or stick with on-premises solutions (and listen to your cloud architects complain about “legacy thinking”).

But what if—and hear me out—the answer isn’t choosing one or the other?

Enter hybrid managed file transfer (MFT) automation: the architecture that admits your infrastructure is complicated and deals with it accordingly.

Why Traditional MFT Forces a False Choice

The global MFT market is exploding—from $1.3 billion in 2020 to a projected $2.4 billion by 2027 at an 8.8% CAGR. Yet most vendors still push solutions designed for a world that doesn’t exist anymore: one where all your data lives in the same place.

Here’s what vendors don’t mention: adopting a pure cloud or pure on-premises MFT strategy often creates new operational silos. You solve one problem and create three new ones. Classic enterprise IT.

The real question isn’t “cloud or on-premises?”—it’s “how do we manage both without losing our minds?”

The Coordinator-Agent Model (Or, How to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too)

For data that ultimately must traverse legacy systems, cloud storage and SaaS applications while respecting internal security policies, there is a better solution. A coordinator-agent topology represents the industry’s reluctant admission that hybrid complexity isn’t going away. Cloud-based coordination provides centralized management. Private and cloud agents handle actual file transfers at the endpoint using SFTP, FTPS, HTTPS and SMB protocols. Your data stays where it needs to be. Your management stays unified.

This architecture separates the management plane from the execution plane. Translation: you can manage everything from the cloud without forcing every byte through it.

Progress Automate MFT implements this pattern using cloud coordination with lightweight agents for local execution. The agents handle the heavy lifting where your data lives. The cloud handles the orchestration, monitoring and—crucially—the updates you’ll never have to manually install again.

Real Benefits (and the Costs Vendors Downplay)

Progress reports up to 50% TCO reduction with their cloud-native SaaS approach. Less infrastructure to maintain, fewer servers to patch.

The Automate MFT platform provides integrations for major cloud storage and Progress endpoints—ShareFile, AWS, Azure, plus connections to MOVEit and WS_FTP. A centralized library manages tasks, endpoints and credentials. Because writing custom integration code is so 2015.

The Automate MFT workflow designer uses no-code automation, which means your business users can build complex file transfer workflows.

Scheduled and on-demand task execution keeps files moving when they need to.

The Security Story (With Mandatory Skepticism)

Security in hybrid MFT isn’t just about encryption—though yes, you benefit from standard secure protocols. For regulated flows, that includes FTPS (RFC 4217) and SFTP (specified via IETF Internet-Drafts, commonly implemented as v3). The real security win? Your data can avoid unnecessary network traversal.

Local agent execution means that files moving from Server A to Server B in your data center stay in your data center. The cloud engine centralizes orchestration and auditing, while private/cloud agents move files over SFTP/FTPS/SMB between your endpoints—keeping transfers local to your chosen path.

Progress Automate MFT agents communicate with the cloud coordinator via encrypted connections. Authentication happens centrally, but execution happens locally. It’s the security model equivalent of “trust but verify.”

Making the Hybrid Decision (or Accepting Your Fate)

Most enterprises now operate across multiple clouds, with the average organization using a mix of public and private clouds that totals over five distinct cloud environments. Add legacy on-premises systems that aren’t going anywhere (because that COBOL application from 1987 still processes payroll), and hybrid isn’t a choice—it’s reality.

The question becomes: do you want unified management of this chaos, or do you prefer managing multiple point solutions? (Trick question: you don’t actually have a choice, but unified management makes the pain more bearable.)

Uncomfortable truth: Your “cloud-first” strategy will still involve on-premises systems in 2030. Plan accordingly.

The Automate MFT centralized library manages tasks, endpoints, credentials and schedules in one place—because copying and pasting configuration between systems is how we spent too much of the 2010s. When someone inevitably breaks production, at least you’ll have centralized visibility into what changed.

The deployment flexibility extends to choosing where agents run—agents can be deployed on local servers, in public cloud or within restricted networks. Because your infrastructure team definitely needs more deployment options to argue about. (Though pragmatically, this flexibility helps you work with whatever infrastructure you already have.)

The Bottom Line

Hybrid MFT automation isn’t simple. It’s a pragmatic response to an imperfect reality where your data lives everywhere and security risks remain.

The coordinator-agent model works because it acknowledges this reality instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. Cloud management provides the unified control plane everyone wants. Local execution helps deliver performance and strengthens security. Together, they provide a better solution.

Ready to explore whether hybrid MFT automation makes sense for your distributed chaos? Start with a clear inventory of where your data lives, where it needs to go and what it will take to connect it all.

Then check out Progress Automate MFT to see if it can help.

Because in the end, the best file transfer architecture is the one that actually handles your files—wherever they happen to live.