And outside of a few glitches related to moving P2P data across a corporate firewall?fixed by making a few configuration changes?Wollman says the technology has worked flawlessly. "Nothing scary has happened to us," he says. "Stability, performance and scalability haven’t been problems."

Distributing the Wealth

Distributed computing is another powerful P2P capability. P2P’s resource sharing capability allows organizations to take computers that are sitting idle or wasting processing cycles on screen savers and consolidates them into a virtual supercomputer. Seti@Home uses this technique to search for extraterrestrial life by tapping more than 2 million computer users to analyze radio signals gathered by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. (See "Waste Not Want Not," CIO, Aug. 1, 2000.) Businesses can use the same approach to tackle an array of processor-intensive tasks, ranging from analyzing flu viruses to developing complex financial models.

Intel has been using a P2P network for distributed computing since the early 1990s. The architecture allows the company’s California chip designers, for example, to take advantage of the abundant computing power that’s available on their Israeli colleagues’ systems when it’s nighttime in the Middle East. According to Intel, the technology has helped the company boost the overall use of its computing resources from 35 percent to 80 percent during the past decade, saving the chip maker nearly a half-billion dollars. "P2P helps organizations acquire more computing power without buying expensive new hardware," says Patrick P. Gelsinger, vice president and chief technology officer of Intel’s architecture group in Beaverton, Ore. "It lets you better use what you already have."

Few companies have the internal computing resources of an Intel, so companies such as Entropia, Popular Power and United Devices have arrived to provide the software and services that allow organizations to harness the underlying computer power of everyday Web surfers. "Users can donate their spare computer time to an altruistic endeavor or sell or barter time for a commercial project," says IDC’s Maclachlan.

Peer to There

Critics warn, however, that the technology shouldn’t be viewed as a magic bullet. "P2P is a raw technology that has a way to go before it can enter the mainstream," says Hurwitz’s Smith. "As CIOs know, early adopters often pay a high price for their boldness."

Network performance is one area where P2P can fail to live up to its promise. As more people access a P2P network, the increasing traffic can bump up against individual machines that are hobbled by slow Net connections or processors. Maclachlan says the ripple effects from these roadblocks can degrade network performance. "You want to be careful who you invite on to your P2P network for this as well as security reasons," he says.