Ameriflex Replaced Its On-Premise SFTP Server With Files.com—Without Partners Reconfiguring a Setting

Ameriflex administers consumer-directed health plans, COBRA, and benefits enrollment for employer clients and vendor partners across the United States. Its parent group processes more than 13 million transactions and $3 billion in payments a year across 1.2 million participants.

That work is regulated end to end. HIPAA governs the data, and COBRA insurance files carry statutory processing deadlines. It also runs on files. Enrollment data arrives from employer HR systems, then moves among employers, brokers, carriers, and benefits platforms. The connective tissue of that position is file exchange over SFTP with systems Ameriflex does not control. For years, the point where all of those files landed was a server in Ameriflex's own racks.

Replacing that server without disrupting regulated file delivery would require Files.com to take over not just the files, but the endpoint itself: its hostname, host key, and access posture.

The Server Every Partner Was Wired Into

Ameriflex's intake point for employer and vendor partner files was an on-premise SFTP server, hosted and maintained in-house. Its sister company Workforce Go, which delivers payroll and HR implementation for the same client base, ran its partner exchange on Cerberus. Everything about that estate, from patching to uptime to security posture, sat with Ameriflex's own technology team.

The cost was not abstract. These are HIPAA-regulated files with deadlines attached: a COBRA file that fails to arrive is a compliance problem with a statute behind it, not an IT ticket. The regulated workflow also required a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement. And the estate was growing. The requirement went from roughly 100 partner and internal users toward more than 200 within a single year, and every new partner added one more connection the in-house server had to carry.

Why It Had to Move All at Once

Two things kept the server in place long after it had become a liability.

First, the counterparties were external. Employer-side systems such as Workday connectors and WEX COBRApoint templates dropped files directly onto the Ameriflex endpoint, alongside the SFTP clients of vendor partners. Every one of those connections was configured by someone else, with the hostname, the trusted host key, and the source IP addresses baked into a system Ameriflex could not touch. Any change to that endpoint risked breaking file delivery for employer clients with statutory deadlines running.

Second, Ameriflex's legacy applications could read from only a single delivery location. A phased migration, with some partners on the old server and some on the new, was not an option. The entire estate had to move in one hard cutover.

That defined what the replacement had to do. It had to preserve the endpoint every partner already trusted, carry a HIPAA BAA, and absorb the growth in partner accounts without adding anything for the technology team to maintain. Ameriflex selected Files.com to take over the estate.

One Hard Cutover, With Nothing for Partners to Change

Workforce Go moved first. Files.com Syncs mirrored the existing SFTP folder structure onto the new site, and Cerberus was retired. Ameriflex followed with the larger, single-shot cutover.

Ahead of the window, Files.com connected to the existing server over SFTP and used Sync to move the data and folder structure across. Roughly 100 partner and internal users were created in bulk, while jailed root folders and partner-supplied IP allow-lists reproduced the existing access controls.

Then the decision that made a one-shot cutover survivable: the existing hostname and the SFTP host key were retained on Files.com. To a partner's system, the endpoint after the migration was indistinguishable from the endpoint before it. Same address, same key, same credentials, same allowed IPs. There was nothing for any externally managed connection to update.

A Files.com child site on a separate subdomain served as the test environment. Partners were notified ahead of the migration window and tested connectivity during it; at cutover, Ameriflex repointed production traffic behind the retained endpoint. Ameriflex's developers also used the Files.com .NET SDK to pull user-activity data, so the operations team could verify, account by account, which partners had connected to the new site.

A HIPAA BAA, a Doubled Estate, and No Server to Maintain

With Files.com in production, Ameriflex replaced a self-hosted regulated intake estate with a managed platform, and partners did not have to change their settings or reconfigure their systems.

• The whole estate moved in one window without partner-side reconfiguration.
• The regulated workflow now runs under a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement, on a platform whose patching, uptime, and security posture are no longer the technology team's responsibility.
• Onboarding a new partner is now a user account, a jailed root folder, and an IP allow-list. The estate more than doubled within the year, from roughly 100 users to more than 200, with no new infrastructure behind it.
• Both operating businesses run their own Files.com site under one parent, with the same administrator identity reaching both through SSO, and both legacy systems—the on-premise server and Cerberus—are gone.

The Endpoint Outlived the Server

The partners wired into a self-hosted server look like the reason it can never be replaced: too many connections, configured by too many other people, all of which have to move at once. Because Files.com took over the hostname and the host key along with the files, Ameriflex moved every one of them in a single cutover, and not one of them had to change a thing.