GlobalScape

Remember enterprise file transfer? Micro-to-mainframe links? FTP sites? In a sign of the times, one 11-year-old firm with roots in all of the above is out to show that "established" IT technologies can be just as hip as new ones -- and probably cost less.

Since 1996, GlobalScape has made a small but reasonably successful venture of selling managed file transfer software. Based in San Antonio, it's chugged along against other file transfer specialists like Tumbleweed (which likewise has broadened into email data protection).

The firm has 75 employees, mostly in Texas, with about 17 percent in another office in Andover, Mass. It claims more than 6,500 enterprise-level customers and over 2 million FTP client licenses worldwide.

GlobalScape's latest product, a Secure Ad Hoc Transfer (SAT) module for its Enhanced File Transfer (EFT) server, allows remote users Web access to secure files existing on a central server -- without requiring them to contact the administrator to set up a separate account. It costs $4,995.

One SMB user says GlobalScape's EFT has fueled internal efficiencies. Brian Smith, systems administrator at Grange Insurance of Columbus, Ohio, uses the product to give up to 15 field agents Web access to transfer images associated with insurance claims to and from a mainframe back at headquarters. The product has reduced the load on email, saved on associated storage, and streamlined claims processing.But GlobalScape wants to be more than a favorite file transfer utility. In September 2006, the company bought Availl, a small WAFS player, for $9.6 million -- roughly half of what GlobalScape scores in annual sales. The mostly cash deal was a strategic move aimed at increasing GlobalScape's footprint in the IT space.

Specifically, GlobalScape sees its mission as integrating file transfer with newer techniques to improve enterprise data access. The merger with Availl netted it CDP and WAFS technologies, which it continues to sell in a remote-office pitch. For now, the strategy is to sell FTP and CDP/WAFS separately but side-by-side, encouraging customers to buy both for "synergy."

As to actual integration of WAFS/CDP and FTP, that will have to come later. "GlobalScape continues to look at a product road map that will increase the coupling of the two solutions," says a spokeswoman. Meanwhile, management sees more work to be done just to make its products better known.

"We are ready now and are kicking off an aggressive marketing campaign to introduce all of our products to all of our customers," said CEO Randy Poole (ex-ATSI, American Paging, GeoCom Partners, MobileComm) in a prepared statement announcing the company's earnings this week. "GlobalScape is generating some nice momentum and expects improved results for the second quarter."

Recent revenues were uneventful. Revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2007 was $3,623,147, up 50 percent year-on-year. But the company's income from operations declined 6 percent, and its net income was down 14 percent.Poole thinks better things are coming, especially given that GlobalScape just won a $2.5 million-plus contract with the U.S. Army. GlobalScape also has IPO ambitions. Though it's traded on bulletin boards now, it filed for admission to the American Stock Exchange in December 2006 -- a project that's apparently a work in progress.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch