Most of my products I install are behind a firewall.
The FTP is still required to get the customer to the latest and greatest. It requires certain serial commands and that old technology seems to be leaving most of the new cadets.
They do not have the means or tech to do it.
Serial is not dead.
Not a bit. Just last week we had to arrange for a BIOS-level serial port on a computer one of our devs was using. Our usual USB-to-Serial adapter was inapplicable, since the BIOS didn't have support for USB at that level. Wound up purchasing a PCI plug-in card with a 9-pin connector. A wave of nostalgia washed over us all...