Sun advances P2P strategy with acquisition

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - Just weeks after its first public hints of peer-to-peer technology aspirations, Sun last week announced plans to acquire the privately held, peer-to-peer search company InfraSearch.

In mid-February, Sun Chief Scientist Bill Joy outlined the company's plan to develop a foundational technology for peer-to-peer communications called Juxtapose, or Jxta for short. The news came as a surprise to some because Sun until then had not declared its interest in peer-to-peer. With the pending InfraSearch acquisition, however, Sun now appears to be aggressively trying to position itself for a possible peer-to-peer wave.

InfraSearch develops search technology for peer-to-peer communications, and therefore could help provide one of the basic services for Sun's Jxta platform. Sun looks for the technology to make certain content much easier to find while working in a peer-to-peer environment.

Sun offered a stock-for-stock deal to InfraSearch and will have to wait for certain approvals. Exact terms were not disclosed.

Joy gave only a vague outline of where Sun plans to go with Jxta. The Internet pioneer did say, however, that Sun wants it to be an open source type of project, in which many developers contribute to its growth.

Intel executives slammed Jxta during the recent Intel Developer Forum in San Jose. Pat Gelsinger, CTO at Intel, encouraged Sun to join other peer-to-peer coalitions that have been working for some time on their own protocols. He called Sun's Jxta "sketchy" in its details and "proprietary" by nature.

The popularity of song-swapping service Napster has sparked an intense interest in peer-to-peer among some of the IT world's largest vendors. Companies now appear to be positioning themselves to take advantage of what some are calling the computing model for the next generation of the Internet.

Vance is a correspondent with IDG News Service in San Francisco.