Not convinced https is a simple substitute for ftp. Think of the new asp.net MVC framework. The http root directory is not the root directory of the MVC app, but a sub directory (which by the way is a good design decision, separating executable from static content). So with https you will only have access to a subdirectory of the application you need to deploy. Not sure you will be able to use https to deploy.

ftpes sftp and ftps are alternative solutions but I found them to be extremely incompatible between softwares. I never managed to get filezilla ftp client to connect to a secure IIS ftp server. And Visual Studio can't deploy to secure ftp, etc.