Peer-to-Peer Isn't Dead - Industry Trend or Event

Industry Standard, The, April 23, 2001 by Mark Roberti

The technology behind Napster has found a legitimate role in business.

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE technology that illegally distributed millions of Britney Spears MP3s would help government bureaucrats trade statistics on carbon dioxide emissions? Peer-to-peer file sharing, the technology behind Napster, is moving into offices and cubicles, and this time it's entirely legal.

The federal government recently unveiled a new Web site that uses peer-to-peer technology to revolutionize the way it collects, shares and disseminates statistical data. In addition, multinational pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline revealed last week that it's rolling out p-to-p technology so 10,000 employees and researchers outside the company share drug data. Law firm Baker & McKenzie is already using p-to-p, as are major investment banks such as Bear Stearns, ING Barings and J.P. Morgan.

These p-to-p systems are like Napster with a lock and key. The outlaw music-swapping service uses a central directory to point users who want to download a file to another PC where that file is stored. The corporate version of the technology typically requires employees to store files on servers, which can be password-protected. Authorized individuals are alerted when new files are added and when they can access them.

In some cases, p-to-p makes the information being swapped more useful. Government statistics, for example, have until now been dumb. Figures on everything from population growth to energy consumption, available to the public on the FedStats.gov portal since 1995, appear as numbers on a page -- not particularly helpful to anyone who needs to parse the information. "People want the actual data that they can sort and combine with other data," says Brand Niemann, a computer scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency and one of a handful of technology gurus who are transforming the way the federal bureaucracy does its work. "That's what we're going to provide," he says.

Thanks to p-to-p technology, the government can now make statistics downloadable into spreadsheets that can be sliced and diced as needed. "We can create new documents and databases that weren't possible before," says Niemann, who is also a member of the federal government's FedStats task force.

P-to-p will also make collecting data a lot easier. The U.S. government gathers statistical information in 5,000 categories from 3,000 counties across the nation, and the process is cumbersome and wide open to error. Local workers in the field record information on paper forms, which are sent to an agency's state office. The information is then typed into a computer and forwarded to Washington. With the technology Niemann's group is using from a company called NextPage, each agency's county representative would enter data on a handheld computer and copy the file to a local server. The data would be automatically available to everyone else on the system and to the public; every time the file is modified, everyone would see the update. "The potential time and cost savings are enormous," notes Niemann. "And you wouldn't have an annual statistical abstract; it would be a real-time statistical abstract."

That's great for the government, but few companies compile statistical abstracts. Still, there's plenty of information stored on individual hard drives -- e-mail, spreadsheets, industry reports, JPEG images, news items downloaded from the Web and so on -- that could be shared profitably with colleagues or customers. How can a company sort out the valuable information and get it into the right hands?

Brokerage houses generate countless reports and briefs, which they send by fax and e-mail to their clients, who use the information to weigh trades. A dozen or so major financial firms are using p-to-p software from a 2-year-old Boston company called World-Street to deliver more-targeted and timely information to customers to foster closer relationships.

Users set up profiles that tell the system what kind of information they want, whom they want it from and with whom they want to share it. For example, Bear Stearns brokers who are focused on retail stocks could choose to be alerted when a new report on Wal-Mart is stored on the system. The system would also show what other relevant information is available, which could be anything from an e-mail tip a broker added a few minutes ago to an audio file created by a researcher who visited Wal-Mart several days ago. When brokers forward the package to key clients, those clients are notified via e-mail or a wireless device. "This brings you closer to your [customers]," says Stanley Sakellson, senior managing director at Bear Stearns.

Passing files back and forth is great, but in many cases companies want employees to work on the same documents or files collaboratively. For instance, when designing a car or airplane, engineering departments either send paper drawings via FedEx or send large electronic files back and forth. In these cases, it would be better if each person could view the same sketch at the same time and immediately see any changes made by anyone with access.