I was just in a demonstration of a file transfer application called AXWAY Tumbleweed which someone compared to both FTPS and SFTP. Which made me scratch my head as I knew they were both very different things and only one of them was actually 'Secure FTP'.

So, as much as a memory jogger for me as anything else:

FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol.  It's used for transferring data, generally files, between one computer and another. It's one of the oldest forms of file transfer mechanisms and traditionally allows you to upload/download a file to a server. Its not encrypted. Data is sent over the wire just as it is. FTP is a fantastically versatile protocol and virtually every computer system supports it.