Hyundai Auto - Canada
Draga Culjik is a Systems Administrator who works in a mixed shop, dependent on IBM i and Windows systems to manage their workflows. She needed to find a managed file transfer solution that could easily integrate with multiple platforms and still include the robust features she needed. After researching multiple vendors, she chose GoAnywhere and continues to find new ways to implement it to make her job easier.
Transcript:
My name is Draga Culjik and I work as a Systems Administrator at Hyundai Auto Canada for the last 15 years and I take care of the iSeries, Voice over IP and file transfers as well.
What challenges led you to look for a better file transfer solution?
Historically, we used our iSeries server to do all of our data transfers between us and vendors so we had more and more vendors that required secure file transfers and we could not accommodate it with our iSeries directly for it so I looked up three or four vendors and we decided to go with GoAnywhere because most vendors either had a Windows solution or an iSeries but not really integrated and we wanted something that would work well with Windows services as well as iSeries.
What are some of the ways you're using GoAnywhere?
We had FTP Windows solution and then we had FTP on iSeries and we have the people who do their things on their own PCs so now it's like one solution, consolidate everything into one. It does all of our data transfers, for like daily deposit, positive pays, checks, invoices. Current sale invoices go to the banks. Everything that needs to be secured goes through GoAnywhere.
How has the error reporting feature made a difference for you?
At Hyundai there was no way of notifying us. The job would finish completely, but there would be no data transferred, so we would not really know if there was an issue with the data transfer, right? There was no way for us to have that alert. Now we have that option.
We know right away if the job has failed or the job is successful. I can send an email to the business if they need to know if the file has arrived. I even email the business partners or vendors letting them know as well that we have received the file so the communication is always there. It's not like five days later we find out that's something's not working. Here we know right away if things are working or things are not working.
What's your favorite GoAnywhere feature?
The one I think I like a lot is the job triggers that we have -- files that can be sent more than once, and if you have the job scheduled just run at a certain time, the file gets overwritten. But with the job triggers, you can just trigger a job project anytime, whenever the file comes in. Sometimes the file just comes into the system, it just triggers the project, runs it. If the next one comes a second later, it will trigger another project. It's great.
Have software updates gone smoothly?
I find it very easy to do any updates, like, it's seamless, it's fast, it's not like you have to be down for half a day to do an update. It downloads fast and the documentation is great. It's easy to use. It's a complex software when you think of what it can do, but it's kind of intuitive and easy to use and easy to manage.
What advice would you give others who need a more efficient file transfer solution?
I would say purchase GoAnywhere. Plus I think it does everything. Some people are more into i Series/AS/400 solution oriented, some people like the Microsoft side. You guys have it for both. I can run the jobs from our solution on Windows server, not an iSeries so we can call the project, call the jobs, call the CL programs on iSeries so it's very well integrated. Getting the SQL data from the iSeries to the server… and I didn't find any other vendor that had that in place.
It was just an iSeries only, which wasn't really good enough for us, or it was only on Windows and it wasn't really well integrated on iSeries, and as a mixed shop, it was really well integrated on both sides.
Any final words?
It does what it says it's going to do and even more. No matter what my requirements are, I was always able to find a reliable solution using GoAnywhere that will fit. When I get a requirement from the vendor to do something, I'm like, "Oh my God, am I going to be able to do this?" I ask and call GoAnywhere, and oh yeah, no problem, and I'm like, "Oh, wow!" Sometimes you buy something and it does just one thing. I find that GoAnywhere is really robust and it can do everything and all of our requirements are covered by this software.