P2P Makes its Business Case - Page 2

The Big Guns and P2P

Entrepreneurs are not the only ones that jumped on the P2P bandwagon. Industry giants like Sun Microsystems , Intel Microsoft and IBM have spent the past couple years trying to leverage the technology into the business community.

The results have been mixed. Initially, all major software vendors jumped into P2P with the idea of using the technology in the workplace. Most of them, however, after a big splash quickly diverted resources to grid computing.

For the most part, these companies are working behind the scenes to develop P2P technology. In 2000, Intel formed the Peer-to-Peer Working Group to foster improvements in the technology. But membership model was based more on how much you pay than what you could bring to the table, and it fizzled.

Since then, Intel has mainly focused on grid computing and the popular Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer Program, an initiative similar to the SETI Project in that it takes unused processing power in consumer PCs to perform mathematical computations in cancer research.

IBM, like Intel, had lofty P2P plans. It created BabbleNet, a P2P real-time chat experiment on their alphaworks Web site. The project was retired in 2001. Since then, Big Blue has been mum on P2P efforts, refusing interview requests.

Microsoft, with its consumer base, has seen more success. While officials also declined comment, Microsoft has a comprehensive P2P networking site surrounding Windows XP. There are programs that allow users to share files and chat with other MSN Messenger users. Officials have also included developer tools, as well as application program interfaces to bring third-party independent software vendors (ISVs) onto the platform.

After several years of quiet work, Sun recently introduced a new version of JXTA, a P2P protocol to connect PCs and mobile devices like PDAs, laptops and wireless phones, which improved security and performance issues. Since its formation, the JXTA code has been downloaded more than 2 million times, but is slowly gaining support among industry leaders. Of the 22 members in the JXTA group, only Nokia and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are easily recognized.

Lack of business support for the technology is the main hindrance to widespread adoption. While the benefits of distributing large media files peer-to-peer free companies from buying more bandwidth, the notion of file transfers happening behind administrators' backs have most IT managers worried, despite reassurances by P2P vendors that the technology provides an audit trail.

META Group's Gotta said he's never gotten the sense that companies were against the technology in general, but that lingering questions of security and compliance taint any conversation. The lack of visibility of network operations is sometimes called the "dark Net."

"(Companies often tell me) 'What I don't want is a lot of dark Net in my company, where I don't know what's going on and I can't tap into them, because I'm responsible for them,' " he said. "Some business decision-makers are afraid the dark Net would be proliferating in their company and they don't know what the liability is."