A Supply Chain Software Vendor Replaces C-5, Nextcloud, and FTP With Files.com for Large Database Backups

A European supply chain and commerce software vendor serves retail, logistics and industrial companies with everything from demand forecasting and inventory optimization to merchandise management and point of sale. The company does not just license its software. It installs, supports and debugs its ERP and POS systems at hundreds of installed customer sites, and debugging a database problem means getting the database: when a customer's system misbehaves, the vendor pulls a backup of that customer's database into its own environment for analysis. Those databases run from megabytes up to hundreds of gigabytes, and a typical return trip moves tens of gigabytes. File exchange is not a side channel at the vendor. It is the step between a broken retail system and the engineer who can fix it.

Every Large Backup Fell to the FTP Path

The vendor's exchange estate had grown into three systems, each covering a gap in the others. A transfer platform called C-File ("C-5") gave customers a decent web interface but capped transfers at 30 GB, which put nearly every serious database out of its reach. So a self-hosted FTP server stayed in service for anything large, and Nextcloud ran alongside for sharing.

The FTP path is where the cost landed, and it landed on customers at the worst possible moment. To send a backup, a customer needed an FTP client installed, and their security team had to open firewall exceptions on both sides to reach the vendor's server, all while their ERP or POS issue was still open. The vendor had outgrown a setup that taxed the customer as the price of getting help.

The obvious fix, moving everything to the web, did not survive contact with the vendor's customer base. Its customers are mostly large companies that route web traffic through corporate proxies, which made browser transfers slow and unreliable at exactly the file sizes that mattered. That is why the vendor's consultants had been requesting dedicated SFTP access through customer firewalls in the first place.

So consultants kept moving tens of gigabytes per trip by hand with FileZilla-class desktop clients, across three systems with three sets of accounts to manage. The vendor set the bar for whatever replaced them around its GDPR obligations: data held in the EU, every download and share logged, and every copy of a customer database expiring on a schedule. It wanted one exchange that enforced all three rather than three systems that each covered part of the job.

The Fix Had to Speak Both Browser and SFTP

The requirements described the gap precisely. One platform had to offer a web page a customer could use with nothing installed and no firewall change, and at the same time offer real protocol endpoints (SFTP, FTP and WebDAV) for the proxy-bound enterprise networks and the consultants working inside them. It had to carry files running to hundreds of gigabytes. It had to log every download and share, expire files on a schedule, and hold the data in the EU. C-5 had the web face without the size or the protocols. The FTP server had the protocol without anything else.

The vendor selected Files.com to be that single exchange layer.

One Exchange Layer for Hundreds of Customer Environments

Files.com became the one platform between the vendor and every customer environment, reachable by whichever path each customer's network allows. The whole exchange runs under the vendor's own branded domain, so what a customer sees carries the vendor's name.

For customers whose networks permit browser uploads, the exchange is a web page. Each customer gets its own folder structure with an inbox share link for pushing database backups in and an outbox link for pulling fixes and artifacts back out. Nothing to install, no firewall ticket, no account to manage. Files.com also removed the 30 GB ceiling that had kept the FTP server alive.

The vendor made that structure self-provisioning. The team built its own automation against the Files.com API, driven from its TopDesk service desk: a request creates the customer's folder set and its inbox and outbox links, and the same automation cleans up stale folders when an exchange is finished. Adding the next customer costs a ticket, not an afternoon of setup.

For consultants working in environments where the browser route is unsuitable, Files.com's SFTP endpoint and desktop app replaced the dedicated connections into the vendor's own server. A consultant uploads a full database backup from the customer's premises without asking anyone to change a firewall rule. Because those logins happen inside environments the vendor does not control, they were hardened during rollout: session lifetimes were cut sharply, with per-user two-factor authentication.

Governance is enforced by the platform. Files.com retention policies expire customer database copies on schedule. The audit log records every download and every share. All of it is stored in Files.com's EU region, keeping the data in the EU on GDPR grounds. And the vendor consolidated its outbound software distribution onto the same platform: a single share-link hierarchy publishes every product release, with each customer pointed at its subfolders.

Terabytes a Month, and No More Firewall Tickets

With Files.com in production, the vendor retired the FTP server, C-5 and Nextcloud, replacing a three-system estate and its firewall ritual with one governed exchange.

• Customer-side firewall exceptions are gone. Customers can use browser links where their networks permit them, while consultants can use SFTP where the browser route is unsuitable.
• The 30 GB ceiling is gone. Transfers of hundreds of gigabytes run through the same platform as everything else, at terabyte-scale monthly volumes.
• Every download and share is on the record, and database copies expire on schedule. The audit logging and retention the vendor's GDPR obligations call for are enforced by Files.com policy.
• Onboarding the next customer exchange is a service-desk request. The vendor's automation creates the folders and links against the Files.com API, and nothing lingers once it goes stale.
• Release distribution to the entire installed base runs from one share hierarchy instead of ad hoc delivery.

Debugging Starts With the Database, Not the Firewall

Today, when an ERP or POS system at one of the vendor's customers needs attention, the work begins with the data instead of the network. The customer, or the consultant standing in their server room, sends the backup through Files.com over whichever path that environment already permits, and the analysis starts. The copy lands in the EU region, expires on its schedule, and every access is logged. What used to open with a request to the customer's security team now opens with the file.

The larger point: a web interface customers will actually use and the protocol endpoints enterprise networks actually require do not have to live in different products. The vendor ran three systems because each had half of the answer. Files.com is where both halves turned out to be one platform.