InformationWeek

T sometimes stands in the way of business collaboration. Ideally, collaboration implies individuals sharing information in real time and acting on it. The problem is that conventional client-server infrastructures favor more centralized, hierarchical information dissemination. So, many businesses are experimenting with peer-to-peer technology to put knowledge workers directly, and instantly, in touch with each other. Peer-to-peer networks such as Napster let users collaborate and share documents with little or no intervention from a central server.

Employees of business software developer Morningstar Systems Inc. need to collaborate across offices from the Philippines to The Netherlands. To make it happen, the Owings Mills, Md., company recently deployed a peer-to-peer network using software from Endeavors Technology Inc. Chief technology officer Mike Oliver says peer-to-peer beats E-mail and instant messaging for document sharing and code reviews. It permits richer communication and saves bandwidth, he says, because content doesn't need to be server resident. "We needed real-time collaboration; other technologies don't offer an easy way to do that."

A peer-to-peer system also makes it easier to loop in freelancers, consultants, and other business partners. "We can share files with these people without giving them total access to our intranet," Oliver says.

Research and design work lends itself particularly well to peer-to-peer collaboration. Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline plc last month purchased 10,000 peer-to-peer software licenses from Groove Networks Inc. so that its researchers could engage in a worldwide collaborative network with scientists from universities and biotechnology companies. Groove's software lets users work together in a secure environment that sits outside company firewalls.

Robert Norton, VP at Delaware Investment Advisors in Philadelphia, says its new peer-to-peer system helps it better manage research provided by Wall Street analysts. That's essential, he says, because the commissions Delaware pays to the likes of Salomon Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch & Co. are based partly on how much research the company consumes. The system, developed by WorldStreet Corp., tracks where research is sent and what's accessed.

Peer-to-peer technology is quickly proving itself well-suited to the decentralized computing environments that true collaborative relationships require. "It's going to play a big part in providing the supporting infrastructure for a lot of the ideas people are talking about," says Cap Gemini Ernst & Young consultant Dale Perrott. So don't be surprised if you're soon swapping a lot more than music through the networks.