Companies that create peer-to-peer software for business-related trading, collaboration and content management are beating back analyst's skepticism of P2P's success in the corporate world.
Groove Networks, which supports simultaneous collaborations among workers, recently announced three big customers including pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, Raytheon and the Department of Defense.
Other P2P companies, including Consilient and Netrana, are also courting their share of the business market. Consilient makes software that creates 'sitelets' - which collect and contain documents used by various projects as they move from person to person or department to department. Netrana hopes to sell its SpotDealMaker software to brokers who deal in electronic components, chemicals and food products.
Blue Tiger Networks is confident that its P2P trading platform, built for the Netrana application, will serve real business needs. The company plans to start three pilot projects with private trading exchanges by June.
GNUMarkets, FirstPeer and Biz2Peer Technologies have also developed trading platforms. The idea behind those products is that by removing a central exchange, companies can eliminate adoption problems that kept transaction volumes low.
Other companies, such as Netpage and SmartPeer are developing tools for knowledge management that use P2P to distribute content such as spreadsheets, designs and personnel records.
Companies that create P2P tools that solve real business problems will find their market niche with or without easy venture capital.
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Ann Harrison is a technology reporter in San Francisco. She can be reached at ah@well.com.
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