FM Global Logistics Replaced On-Premise FTP and AS2 Servers With Files.com—Without Changing Customer Integrations

FM Global Logistics is one of the largest integrated logistics providers in Malaysia. Founded in 1988 and listed on Bursa Malaysia, the group moves freight through 48 offices in 11 countries, runs customs brokerage at every major Malaysian gateway, and operates 1.3 million square feet of bonded and non-bonded warehousing. It is unusual among forwarders of its size in owning the operation end to end: its own trucking fleet, its own warehouses, its own container freight stations.

The warehousing side of that business runs on its customers' data. A customer's ERP sends an order file; FM Global's warehouse management system executes the transaction; a confirmation file goes back for the customer's ERP to collect. Goods move when files move. And for more than a decade, every one of those files passed through a single on-premise FTP server.

FM Global Logistics moved the integration backbone of its warehousing business to the cloud without asking a single trading partner to change how it connects.

When the Server Hung, Customers Could Not Send Orders

That server was more than ten years old and had reached end-of-life support. It hung, and it hung often enough to interrupt the order flow itself.

“Intermittent problems where the customer will not be able to send files, and we are not able to download files.”

During those outages, orders were missed. Recovery was entirely manual: wait for the server to come back, re-download everything, ask customers to resend what was lost, then check file by file for gaps that nobody could be sure were closed.

A second on-premise server carried EDI for one major customer over the GXS network, with production and test environments FM Global maintained itself. When an acknowledgement failed to send, the customer queried whether their files had arrived, and staff verified receipt one file at a time. Around both servers, the supporting work was manual too. No functional scripts managed the estate, and file volumes were growing toward the limit of what the hardware could hold.

New Hardware Would Have Solved the Wrong Problem

Mathew Soo, FM Global's MIS Manager, advised replacing the server hardware. That was the obvious fix, and it would have reset the clock without changing anything: the company would still be patching, still securing, still planning capacity, and still buying the next server when this one aged out. Dean Vun wanted out of that cycle entirely.

“Mathew advised me to change the server, but I was thinking if we are able to host it online instead, so that we don't have to worry about security or hardware upgrades.”

The timing pushed the same way. FM Global was moving its wider operations, including its Infor warehouse management system, to the cloud, and its file volumes were outgrowing on-premise capacity.

What made replacement hard was who was connected. Roughly ten customer ERP systems pushed and pulled order files directly against the FTP endpoint, and the AS2 connection was fully integrated into the major customer's own systems, so it could not be moved to a different protocol. Whatever replaced the servers had to speak SFTP and AS2 exactly as the old machines did, keep each customer's traffic apart from every other's, record precisely when each file arrived and left, and meet Dean Vun's first requirement, which was security.

FM Global Logistics selected Files.com to be that exchange layer.

One Files.com Site Between Ten Customer ERPs and the Infor WMS

The rollout was a fresh build: roughly ten SFTP connections and one AS2 connection. Using Files.com's per-user folder and protocol permissions, each customer got its own inbound and outbound folders, with access locked to those folders and to the protocol that customer used. No customer can see another's traffic.

Files.com kept each SFTP exchange sorted between the customer ERPs and the Infor WMS. Customers sent order files into isolated inbound folders, and the WMS returned transaction confirmations through outbound folders for their ERP systems to collect.

The major EDI customer ran the same order-and-confirmation loop over AS2 through GXS. Files.com handled acknowledgements on the same site, returning a signed digital receipt for every transmission. There was no AS2 server behind any of it, and no self-maintained production and test environments to keep alive.

A custom domain was planned into the cutover so that customer-side scripts would not need rewriting. Customers kept connecting the way their integrations were already written to connect. The resulting traffic is almost entirely machine to machine; people log into the web interface only to confirm that a file arrived, usually when a customer asks.

No Servers to Patch and a Timestamp on Every File

With every connection cut over, FM Global Logistics replaced two servers it had to operate with a platform it does not.

• The class of outage that cost the company orders went away with the server that caused it, and so did the recovery routine that followed every hang: re-downloading files, chasing resends, and checking for gaps.
• There is no hardware to refresh, no operating system to patch, and no capacity plan to revisit as file volumes grow.
• The EDI connection for the major customer runs as configuration on the same site rather than as a server pair FM Global maintains.
• Every file movement is recorded with a precise timestamp, so FM Global knows exactly when an order arrived from a client and when a confirmation went back.

That last point was one of the things Dean Vun said set Files.com apart.

“The timestamp of the files that come through the FTP and the AS2 is very important, so that we know exactly when the files were received and sent to our clients.”

The larger result is repeatable onboarding on the existing Files.com site. FM Global is moving everything to the cloud, and its WMS will integrate with most future customers over the same file exchange. Onboarding one requires a set of folders and a credential, using protocols the customer's ERP already speaks, rather than additional server capacity.

The Servers Left and the Customers Never Noticed

Today, an FM Global customer sends an order the same way it always did: its ERP drops a file on an SFTP endpoint, or transmits over AS2 through GXS, and a confirmation comes back for its system to collect. What changed is everything behind that endpoint. Keeping order files flowing no longer means keeping a ten-year-old machine alive, and a question about whether a file arrived is answered from the Files.com web interface, timestamp included, rather than by checking file by file.