P2P an 'IT business imperative'

Companies in emerging markets could use P2P to curb expensive service agreements on hardware such as servers, says Adaptiva CTO Deepak Kumar.

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Peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies have evolved from file sharing platforms to present enterprises with opportunities for secure data distribution backbones.

This is according to Deepak Kumar, CTO of IT systems management company Adaptiva. He says secure enterprise P2P technology, using authorised peers within companies, "can replace enormous amounts of costly infrastructure, presenting a big market with many possibilities".

While P2P first rose to prominence as a means to download music and software, Kumar notes it could become a "fully-fledged IT business imperative" if organisations take advantage of the technology to manage wide distributed networks.

Kumar says P2P allows for secure data management if managed correctly and allows enterprises to replace servers orchestrating peers to provide "virtual services".

Companies with multiple locations might have needed a server in every office, but Kumar says P2P provides solutions to only use one server at one site, while administrators in other locations are able to tap into the same service. "It does it without impacting the clients and without flooding the WAN," he says.

According to Kumar, the technology is applicable across all industries, "however, companies with multiple operating locations are going to benefit the most".

"Having multiple sites, and the limited bandwidth between them, increases the value of secure enterprise P2P technology," he says.

While file sharing is no longer the sole purpose of P2P technology, Kumar says ensuring a secure operating environment remains a concern for businesses. "Enterprise-class P2P file sharing must be totally secure and controlled exclusively by administrators so no end-user can download, upload, or even access the files on their machines.

"Secure enterprise P2P must also be smart enough to avoid flooding the wide area network (WAN) with too much traffic," he says.

Successful P2P technology use should also have no impact on end-users, says Kumar, and IT performance should not drop as a result of its implementation.

While connectivity costs remain a challenge in some emerging markets, Kumar notes P2P could be viable, considering infrastructure such as WAN links sometimes have limited availability.

"Service agreements on hardware such as servers can be much more expensive than we see in the US and Europe," explains Kumar.

Companies acquired by global organisations could also use P2P for worldwide networking, he notes.