"We recently have been told that we can no longer transfer things to our mainframe with ftp. We currently use MVS::jesftp to submit some jobs."

Are you asking about "transfer things to our mainframe", "submit some jobs" or some combination of parts or all of those two things?

MVS::JESFTP is over a decade old (most recent version: 09 Jul 2003) and is just a wrapper around Net::FTP. The source code is not very long (possibly only a screenful after removing POD, etc.): it might not be a huge effort to write your own version to suit your needs using, for instance, one of the Net::SFTP::* modules on CPAN.

If you only want to transfer data, you could probably just use a Net::SFTP::* module as is. I did this a few years ago (as part of a contract) using Net::SFTP::Foreign. That worked fine at the time and, to the best of my knowledge, is still in production. I'm not in a position to advise whether that's the current best choice.

If you want to submit/monitor/control JCL, that's probably feasible but I don't know how to do it securely. The last time I did this was in 199? and used just plain Net::FTP (the code was similiar to what I'm currently seeing in the MVS::JESFTP source). Another monk will probably have better information: my best suggestion for an initial place to research how to do this would be Net::OpenSSH.

If the answer is "security", point out that according to the JES2xxx Concepts and Facilities manual, SSL is supported. Then tell them: "The most current release is 4.8.1 and we just need up upgrade."

If the answer is "It Costs Money". then you will have to start building a Business Case for FTP versus FAX or hand delivery of paper through the interoffice mail or whatever other method the OWSN wants you to use as a replacement.

Talk to the End User folks; tell them what is going on and get them on board. They can build the argument about the costs of changing their Process and Retraining. And it WILL over-shadow the cost of the software -- People are expensive, Bits are cheap in comparison.

With the hard figures in hand, the User Manager(s) can go bashing about up the Management Chain and let it come down on the head of the OWSN. There is nothing like getting called into the CFO's office to explain why saving $1500 per year in the IT budget at the cost to the Company of between $10K and $30k is such a good idea.