As enterprises move towards event-driven integration a challenge remains: how to integrate file-based operations from legacy systems into real-time data flows. For organizations deeply reliant on file systems, transitioning to an event-driven ecosystem can seem daunting, but there are many pain points associated with homegrown or legacy file integrations:

• Often limited to “point-to-point” file transfers
• Hard to cross network boundaries such as in hybrid cloud environments
• Lack of connectivity into modern integration platforms

According to Gartner’s most recent “Market Snapshot: Managed File Transfer”, customers are increasingly looking to consolidate/cut the costs of MFT software, leverage MFT-like capabilities of other products, or integrate file transfers into iPaaS using RESTful or event APIs. That’s where we come in.

In this article I will discuss the challenges with legacy file integrations, the advantages of taking an event-driven approach, and explain how Solace’s new PubSub+ Micro-Integration for File Events addresses them.

Shortcomings of Today’s File Transfer Solutions

It’s 2025 and we still move files around this way? Here are the challenges customers are facing with different for file transfer solutions:

• Homegrown File Transfer Solutions: These solutions are difficult to maintain and evolve to meet modern requirements. As IT departments transition to more modern integration patterns, organizational knowledge tends to be lost. Furthermore, these systems are challenging to adapt to new technologies, with limited support for cloud-based file storage and restricted compatibility with SaaS/PaaS deployment models.
• Commercial Managed File Transfer (MFT) Products: Over the decades MFT solutions have steadily evolved to support more and more use cases and provide features for business users. This led to very comprehensive solutions which is great if a business requires all of these but bad news if an enterprise only requires specific capabilities such as internal application to application file transfers.
• Point-to-Point Transfers: Originated during a period when a limited number of file connections were sufficient for moving files from one file location to another. These systems provide either no support or limited support for fan-out and distribution capabilities. Additionally, they are difficult to adapt to changing network topologies, as the transport mechanism is tightly coupled to file transfer protocols, and numerous routes must be opened to cross network boundaries.

Advantages of Adopting Event-Enabled File Transfer

For enterprises relying on legacy applications and file systems, becoming event-driven is more than just a trend—it’s a business imperative. An event-driven integration approach to file transfer is ideal for organizations in finance, healthcare, logistics, and more, where file-based processes are integral to operations. An event-driven approach can unlock new levels of agility and responsiveness without abandoning their existing systems. Here are some examples:

• Banking: Automatically process large amounts of transactional data and regulatory reports stored in files, triggering real-time updates for compliance, auditing, and customer services.
• Stock Exchanges: Real-time streaming of large trading records and market data files ensures instant analysis and response, enhancing decision-making in high-frequency trading environments.
• Insurance: Enable real-time processing of claims data, policies, and customer information stored in files, speeding up operations while integrating with other event-driven systems.
• Financial Services: Automate the handling of large data sets like statements and reports, triggering real-time updates across systems to improve responsiveness and service delivery.
• Healthcare: Streamline file-based workflows for medical records and large datasets, integrating them into an event-driven system for faster processing and analysis, improving patient care and data security.
• Logistics and Supply Chain: Trigger events based on file updates such as shipping manifests and inventory reports, ensuring that critical information flows immediately to all relevant stakeholders.
• Telecommunications: Process usage data, billing records, and service updates stored in files, integrating them into real-time customer support systems and analytics platforms.
• Manufacturing: Enable real-time tracking and monitoring of production files and quality assurance reports, integrating them into a dynamic event mesh to more easily distribute master data to the right systems which can streamline operations and ensure better decision-making.

PubSub+ Micro-Integration of File Events

For enterprises with legacy systems reliant on file handling, modernization can be costly and complex. Our new micro-integration simplifies the transition to event-driven ecosystems by integrating files into real-time workflows with minimal disruption.

Capabilities

As part of our event-driven integration platform, called PubSub+ Platform, PubSub+ Micro-Integration for File Events replaces point-to-point file transfers with de-coupled, reliable data distribution that is built on a decentralized, distributed event mesh.

• File Reading: Automatically retrieve files from legacy systems, cloud storage, or designated file sources for processing via supported protocols such as SFTP, FTP, FTPs, Google Cloud Storage, and S3.
• Streaming: Files are converted into event streams and transported via Solace PubSub+, ensuring they can trigger downstream events across your event mesh.
• File Writing: Any event stream – originating from files, databases or anywhere else – can be assembled into files and stored at predefined destinations, whether on-premise or in the cloud

Benefits

Solace allows you to liberate file data as events making them available in real-time to other business applications and microservices.

1. Effortless Integration Across Protocols: With built-in support for SFTP, FTP, FTPs, Google Cloud Storage, and S3, it allows files to flow seamlessly within a Solace Event Mesh.
2. Real-time File Events: Files no longer need to sit idle in storage—now, they can trigger real-time events, accelerating business processes.
3. Increased Agility: Bring legacy systems into the modern era by turning static file-based operations into dynamic, responsive workflows.
4. Enterprise-grade Scalability: Solace Event Mesh is built to handle large volumes and complexities, ensuring high performance and reliability.

How it Works

It does so by integrating file-based data into your event-driven architecture by enabling files to be read, streamed, and written through your event mesh. It allows files to become active participants in an event-driven ecosystem, effectively transforming static file operations into dynamic, real-time data flows.

1. File Ingestion: The micro-integration identifies and reads files from specified locations across various protocols (SFTP, FTP, FTPs, Google Cloud Storage, and S3).
2. Event Streaming: Files are converted into streams, published to Solace PubSub+, and transported across the event mesh in real-time.
3. Event Consumption: Any service or system within the mesh can respond to the file-based event, driving further actions.

Features

The micro-integration offers a robust set of features to handle a variety of file-based operations in modern event-driven systems:

• File-to-Events: the Micro-Integration can process files in formats such as CSV, delimited, JSON, and XML. It reads individual records from these files and publishes events dynamically across the event mesh on dynamic topics. This allows businesses to extract valuable data from file-based workflows and inject it into real-time streams, triggering immediate actions or processes based on that data.
• Events-to-File: Events can be consumed from a Solace queue, and based on dynamic, configurable settings, these events can be written to a file or cloud storage. This is ideal for organizations that need to store events in a persistent manner, ensuring that event data can be easily accessed or processed later as part of a file-based workflow.

What about unstructured or binary file transfers?

Sometimes you need to distribute files as a whole – unstructured content or binary files such as medical images. We also offer a file distribution Micro-Integration – in a self-managed deployment and eventually available in Solace Cloud –  that takes these payload agnostic transfers into the event driven world. It transfers any type of file without concern for its contents. Data is streamed as a binary payload, enabling high-performance file transfers across systems and making it easy to transfer data to one or many recipients. Whether you’re dealing with text, image, or binary files, the Micro-Integration ensures seamless and efficient transfers.

Summary

In this article I looked at how Solace’s new micro-integration can bridge the gap between legacy file systems and modern event-driven systems. I discussed challenges customers face with legacy file transfer solutions, such as the cost-benefit ratio of MFT products, struggles with point-to-point-transfers and poor connectivity to modern integration platforms.

Organizations are looking to modernize their file transfer solutions and integrate these with modern integration technologies and event driven systems. PubSub+ Micro-Integration for File Events is the key enabler for this journey, enabling you to liberate data as events and making it available in real-time to other business applications and microservices.