P2P comes out of Napster's shadow

Last year, P2P was closely associated with Napster and consumer issues but more recently, file sharing has attracted the attention of corporations including Daimler Chrysler, Intel, Ford and Smithkline Beecham. Those companies have realized its potential usefulness for bandwidth sharing, dynamic collaboration and distributed computing.

That was the conclusion of Ash Vasudevan, head of CommerceNet's investments initiative, who was a panelist at a recent debate entitled "Catching the P2P Wave: Adoption and Diffusion of Peer-To-Peer Networks for Business Use." Other panelists at the event, which was co-hosted by CommerceNet and the Silicon Valley World Internet Center, included executives from Netrana, Sun, Intel, CommerceNet, and Daimler Chrysler.

The first-movers that are experimenting with new uses of P2P, says Vasudevan, include collaboration software developer Groove Networks, P2P supply chain integrator GridTalk, P2P messaging integration company Aimster, and real-time software specialist Redmind. He believes the factors for facilitating P2P adoption include dismantling the power system between server and client allowing for real-time transactions.

Furture business applications identified for P2P include peer collaboration as well as distributed computing and resources.

Ann Harrison is a technology reporter in San Francisco. She can be reached at ah@well.com.

Peer-to-Peer archive
Past newsletters.

A Groove customer speaks up
Network World File Sharing Newsletter, 07/11/01

Peer-to-peer comes of age
Network World File Sharing Newsletter, 05/16/01