Managed file transfer

Gartner's glossary separates it from FTP and ad-hoc scripts on those controls, and on the focus on large files and high volume.

MFT is a product category, not a protocol. Under the job you still find FTP, SFTP, FTPS, HTTPS, or a vendor's own agent. The management layer is what you bought: a partner profile, a key store, a calendar, a failure alert, and a report an auditor can read. A shell script that calls `sftp` in cron is file transfer automation. It becomes MFT when the same move is visible, restartable, and attributable without opening a server log by hand.

A retailer sends a 1.2 GB inventory file to three suppliers every weeknight at 01:15. The MFT job connects to each supplier over SFTP, writes the file, checks the remote size, and writes a row: partner, file name, byte count, start, end, result. On Thursday the second supplier's host refuses the key. The job retries twice, marks that partner failed, and still completes the other two. Friday morning the operator sees one red row, not a silent cron email buried in a mailbox. That visibility is the product.

People collapse MFT into "secure FTP." Secure describes the channel. Managed describes the operations around the channel. A lone SFTP server with a shared password and no transfer log is not MFT, even if the bytes were encrypted on the wire. A portal where a client drags a file once is not MFT either, unless someone can show the schedule, the retry, and the audit later.

The category also gets stretched over any sync folder. Folder sync replicates a tree and resolves conflicts. MFT usually moves a named payload from a source to a destination and then stops. If the requirement is "prove this file reached this partner on this night," you want the audit row. If the requirement is "keep these two folders alike," you are in a different product.