Connect Direct vs. sFTP?

Question

I have a partner who would like us to use a commercial product called Connect Direct where we would normally use ssh based scp or sftp. Besides reading their website, which is of course not quite impartial, is there any material (or do any of you have any opinions or info) on why this software is better than cron (or at) and scp scripting?

Answer 1

Wikipedia has some nice information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDM.

From what I can ascertain with a bit of searching, it was built to guarantee stability with arguably less of a compromise in speed than similarly flexible solutions.

Answer 2

Having used Connect Direct, I would say avoid it if you can.
My reasons are:

• Is very hard to set up (it took our infrastructure team a year)
• There is a massive learning curve to the application, no one here really understands it still
• We haven't found it any more reliable than psftp and a cron job.

On its plus sides:

• Banks seem to love it
• When it works it guarantees that the file is sent and received and you can be quite sure that the communication is secure.

Answer 3

Sometimes you've got to ditch mainframe era technology, even if it used to be top-notch and cost an arm and a leg. From the description I fail to see what Direct:Connect provides that isn't matched or outclassed by scripted rsync, ssh, or even (depending on your needs) tar.