Leading into IBC, which is primarily a European show, it seemed fitting to share this bit of information:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/fast_file_transfer/eurovision/prweb2861634.htm

In short, the article describes how Eurovision has been using FileCatalyst Direct in its pilot program for enhancing the Eurovision News Exchanges. As many of you will already know, Eurovision is a department of the European Broacasting Union, the largest such organization in the world.

We certainly look forward to working with Eurovision as they move forward with the project. Based on the results they’re already seeing in the development framework, FileCatalyst is allowing for an unprecedented usage of available bandwidth.

In a few weeks, we will be in Amsterdam at one of the year’s biggest events, the IBC Conference and Exhibition. If you’re going to be in attendance, visit us during the exhibition (September 11-15) at booth 7.J41. Check out the press release here

The atmosphere is always electric at the IBC, and it’s exciting to meet face-to-face with existing European clients as well as meeting with the growing number of people interested in accelerating their file transfers or improving their workflow.

Each year, the number of attendees interested in file acceleration technology—and FileCatalyst in particular—grows significantly. Only a few years ago, most people meeting us at trade shows and conferences were unaware that there were alternatives to FTP or other TCP-based transfer protocols, and weren’t certain that they needed our kind of technology. In subsequent years, and with a bit more knowledge about TCP’s limitations under their belts, visitors were actively seeking more information or were ready to ditch FTP outright. At this point, a high percentage of our visitors are aware of accelerated file transfer software, and are asking very educated questions while looking for a solution.

At IBC, FileCatalyst will be able to answer those questions face-to-face, as well as discuss the latest products and news.

This year we are also welcoming Turning Point Integration, our integration partner and reseller in the UK, who will be on-hand to talk about the ease of integrating FileCatalyst accelerated file transfer with other 3rd party software, as well as being a point of contact for European attendees wishing to learn more about FileCatalyst after the conference.

With FileCatalyst Direct 2.7.3 released just days ago, as well as FileCatalyst Webmail and Workflow having recently moved to version 4.3, there has been quite a lot of development to discuss. Next versions are just around the corner with some much-requested new functionality. Swing by for a peek at what’s new and find out more about what’s coming up.

Enjoy the show!

Tags: Tradeshows

FileCatalyst Direct has received some new features and improvements. The latest version available as a production release is now 2.7.3, and is available for immediate download from your download page. Please contact your representative if you need more details on how to download and/or upgrade.

New to FileCatalyst 2.7.3:

• I/O tests to identify maximum write speed for available hardware (help identify bottlenecks at the hardware level)
  • User home directory at FileCatalyst Server location
  • At the HotFolder directory (often but not always end-user location)
• Improvements to user listings, including responsiveness and filtering
• Multiple Active Directory and OpenLDAP directory servers for authentication
• Optimization to improve throughput of single connection transfer speeds
• Improvements to connection concurrency: more concurrent users possible; admin may hard-limit number of concurrent connections
• Improvements to Command Line Interface usage and documentation
• Aggressive releasing of Delta transfers and related resources
• Ability to bind specific IP address on the server
• Regular expressions available for filtering on HotFolder tasks
• Improvements to Java Applets:
  • sendLogsToURL variable improved
  • added transfer mode display (UDP/FTP/HTTP)
  • added JavaScript call to modify remoteDir
• Auto-detection of network settings no longer needs ICMP to be enabled
• Improvements to memory handling and resource management

Also worth noting is that both HotFolder and Server documentation (when selecting “Help” from the application itself; not the QuickStart guide) have new and improved Performance Tuning sections. This new section is a must-read for anyone interested in knowing what bottlenecks might be holding them back, or how to squeeze the most out of their transfer.

Tags: new release

The latest production version of FileCatalyst Direct has just been released. Anybody owning a license is invited to contact their representative for download information, or to visit the download portal provided by your account executive.

Here’s a brief list of what’s included:

• Server-side API released as beta product
• Option to force lowercase usernames to assist managing environments with case insensitivity (such as ActiveDirectory)
• renaming of files on the fly with Download applet
• new applet javascript methods to extract transfer information
• option to eliminate drag and dropping of files in queue for upload applet
• Added client CLI ability to specify POST URL
• Added client CLI ability to support file filtering with regular expressions

Along with some maintenance such as a refresh of any third-party libraries being used, 2.7.2 is a recommended update for existing FileCatalyst Direct licensees.

FileCatalyst Direct and Express have been updated to version 2.7.1. As an incremental release, 2.7.1 is primarily a maintenance release, tightening up a few features and adding a few small improvements. 2.7 introduced progressive transfers on file deltas (see our recent article on minimizing data sets) but for uploads only. This release adds the functionality on downloads as well, good news for people with a 2-way workflow who are transferring large files.

Here are the release notes in brief:

• Transfer of deltas file may now be done progressively (start to transfer data while delta file is being built) for both upload and download
• Ability for administrators to see client type and version in Server Remote Admin
• Confirmation dialog before canceling transfers using the applets
• Ability in upload applet to remove browser pane
• “slow start” renamed to a more accurate “congestion control” and default control aggression lowered
• Improved: resuming large delta transfers
• Improved: compatibility of MonitoringAgent with particular SMTP servers

This is a recommended upgrade for any organizations using 2.7.0 or below. Please contact your FileCatalyst representative, or log into the download area to obtain your upgrade.

Please note that the above notes cover the FileCatalyst Server and Client applications as a whole; however, not all features appear in the entry-level FileCatalyst Express solution.

Tags: Acceleration, Direct, Express, Fast File Transfer, FileCatalyst, HotFolder