Technologist Dave Parrot of news agency Reuters predicts plenty of business uses for Napster-style peer-to-peer file sharing systems, if copyright and security issues can be resolved.

Reuters, the news and media services company, is considering peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing to deliver content and services. And it believes it has spotted a way to make cost savings from this emerging new architecture, popularised by the Napster music-sharing service.

"We've been looking at peer-to-peer for a couple of years," says Dave Parrot, senior analyst designer at the research and standards department of Reuters' chief technology office. "We look at all new technologies as they are emerging and, yes, we do think P2P is very interesting."

Parrot has followed the development of Jxta, Sun's proposed standard for peer-to-peer services. He is also following the progress of the Gnutella Napster-like service, Microsoft's HailStorm P2P platform, and a host of others. From his observations, Parrot believes that many firms are taking the wrong approach to P2P. "You must try to understand what it is and define it. Understand what's currently missing ­ like trust, standards and interoperability," he says.

Reuters has focused its research effort so far on understanding the basic models of P2P, as well as security, emerging standards, and payment systems. "We are evaluating how we would like trust to work in terms of our own products," says Parrot.

So what has he concluded so far? "P2P is mainly about better ways of file-sharing but also there is the potential for using spare processing capacity, like the Seti@home project which uses spare capacity on home computers to search for extraterrestrial life. But working out what we are going to do with P2P is a bit like asking someone what they are going to do with TCP/IP." Reuters is particularly interested in Intel's work on P2P as well as the potential of Linux running in Beowulf [large-cluster] configurations.

Despite critics who say that P2P has elements of 'push' technology that failed so badly in 1998 and 1999, Parrot is not disheartened. "We looked at [push firms like] BackWeb and PointCast but, to be honest, we have our own proprietary solutions for those kind of applications. It's not that push failed, it's just that we found it better to do it for ourselves. After all, moving information to our clients is our business. The hype has definitely gone out of push now, that's clear."

Critics have also said that although P2P holds much promise it will be troublesome for firms to control and ensure security. "Yes, it could be disruptive," says Parrot. "You have to look at how it will affect you. The question remains as to how firms will cope with the decentralising effects of P2P. It's a number-one issue which boggles me."

Parrot says that authentication and authorisation will be vital components of corporate P2P systems. "I think Sun is tackling [these issues] with Jxta. The problem is there really are no toolkits out there. Maybe Public Key Infrastructure [PKI] encryption will be the answer."

Parrot says there is likely to be growing use of P2P services hosted online by application service providers (ASPs) as they seek to add value to their offerings. "Yes, ASPs could see themselves as a form of commercial Napster, but larger firms like ourselves will require a lot of ownership."

Parrot says that Reuters is considering how P2P could help it migrate from the client-server model. He sees cost savings in aspects of shared processing and the potential for sharing information more effectively through Napster-like indexing. Parrot says companies are moving towards "a hybrid architecture between client/server and P2P but one where intellectual property rights will be scrutinised more closely than ever" .

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.