Yes Pat. I agree. xp_cmdshell can handle many automation jobs. I use it a lot in my environment.

You mentioned FTP files using xp_cmdshell. One of my articles in the past talked about automating FTP using VBScript. I am not saying which method is better, just throw it out for your reference (watch out for line breaks):

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/hji/usingvbscripttoautomatetasks.asp

Cheers.