Industry notables weighed in Wednesday on what they said was the bright future of peer-to-peer computing and the potential impacts it holds for business and the Internet.

Speakers on a panel at the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer conference in San Francisco
included Dave Stutz, software architect at Microsoft; Ian Clarke, developer
of Freenet; Clay Shirky, partner at The Accelerator Group and p-to-p pundit;
Ray Ozzie, founder and CEO of Groove Networks; and Tim O'Reilly, founder and
CEO of O'Reilly & Associates.

Chief among the topics was the advantage of leveraging p-to-p technology for
knowledge and document management in corporations and throughout the
Internet.

According to Dave Shirky, p-to-p solves the version control problem of
document management, but also complicates the process.

"P-to-P gets us closer to the ideal where a document is not centrally
managed but exists as a theoretical entity. The very nature of a document is
changing," Shirky said. "But even with this advantage, without a central
[repository of information], search becomes a problem," Shirky said.

Freenet inventor Ian Clarke added that p-to-p helps achieve a concept of
"placeless data," which gets rid of the central point of failure problem.

"The location of data is no longer relevant," Clarke said. "If you know what
you want and it is recorded in meta data, that is all that matters."

The panel also discussed the damage that patents and other means of
restricting the free sharing of information can have on the developing
p-to-p industry.

"It is important [that emerging p-to-p ventures] resist the VCs [venture
capitalists] who will say that patents are the way to go in this market,"
conference organizer Tim O'Reilly said. "In a world of interoperability,
patents are not a good thing. Patents do not give you the right to do
anything, but do give you the right only to stop someone from doing
something. This way of thinking is not good for innovation and development.

"The way that knowledge is disseminated has changed, but the patent office
hasn't addressed that," O'Reilly added.

The panelists discussed the various ways p-to-p technology will play an
important role in enterprise business-to-business tools and methods of
conducting business.

The ability of p-to-p technology to add resources to network and
applications is a core benefit, Microsoft's Dave Stutz said.

"A peer is not just an individual but a resource. Peer-to-peer adds resource
awareness and presence awareness," Stutz said. "A resource-aware application
doesn't just fail. P-to-P failure adds information that that resource is no
longer available in the system."

Stutz added that because there are different layers of peering, and many
different ways to use it, p-to-p technology will likely be used in
business-to-business commerce software as well as consumer software and
other uses.

Although many corporations do not realize it, p-to-p has found its way into
business processes though the increased use of IM (instant messaging),
according to Shirky.

"P-to-P is entering the enterprise in IM and is having an effect on the way
business is negotiated," Shirky said.

Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes, emphasized the importance of IM as a core
piece of communication tools in the enterprise.

"I think IM will be deeply embedded in the fabric of communication tools in
corporations and will become integrated more with roaming devices such as
PDAs or Blackberry [devices] that better match the way people work," Ozzie
said.

However, Ozzie cautioned that enterprise-friendly elements need to become
part of corporate IM tools.

"There are key differences in the way corporate workers use IM versus people
in the open Internet. Knowledge workers don't want people to know when they
are available, and they are protective of their activities and time. They
need control over when they are interruptible and not," Ozzie said. "We need
to explore that idea of matching workplace needs and how you present
yourself to other people."

Expanding on the value p-to-p collaboration tools can bring to enterprises,
Ozzie said that p-to-p-based collaboration software can help save money and
time.

"The trend of strategic outsourcing in enterprises decreases some costs but
increases transaction costs and agency costs in business process. Peer
collaboration software can reduce transaction costs by bringing multiple
organizations onto the same page and by maintaining context of workflow,"
Ozzie said. "Peer-to-peer can reduce cost and increase inefficiencies."

In terms of exchanges, Ozzie added that peering relationships can be a more
effective way of doing business.

Offering a reflection on why p-to-p has sparked such heated interest among
technology revolutionaries as well as large influential corporations,
Microsoft's Stutz expressed interest in the value of p-to-p infrastructure
as a window into society.

"P-to-P is a successful phenomenon because it reflects society better than
other types of computing architectures," Stutz said. "It is similar to when
in the 1980s the PC gave us a better reflection of the user. P-to-P is going
to become very important."

InfoWorld.com

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