Extending the Radar Lessons

Some of the drivers for adoption of peer-to-peer computing have included the rapid increase in the number of personal computers, the increase in their computing capabilities in terms of processing speed, cache, and disk storage, and the increase in readily available broadband networks.

The major sections of the peer-to-peer value chain are comprised of network services, platform services, technical applications, and business applications.

The classic conceptual model behind peer-to-peer is where all clients are equal on the network and share each other's resources in terms of processing power, cache, disk storage or content, and applications. As a consequence of this model, each peer must manage its own resources in terms of security, content management and reporting, and interoperability with other peers.

Brokered peer-to-peer combines some of the best technical capabilities of client/server and peer-to-peer. It allows a centralized server to broker the interactions and to take on management functions for task management and allocation of resources, security, search, directory, reporting and monitoring, and interoperability.

Benefits of peer services fall into two main categories: collaborative benefits and computing benefits. The collaborative benefits are mostly related to the business benefits surrounding knowledge management. The computing benefits are related to the exploitation and optimization of existing computing resources.

Challenges for peer services include the level of confidence in the infrastructure and applications in terms of ease of use, security, reliability, availability, performance, manageability, and maintainability.