Putting p-to-p through enterprise moves

Roy Wilsker has a wish that undoubtedly resonates with other enterprise IT leaders. "We are trying to have people work together as partners," says the Tyco Healthcare director of technology planning. "We tried e-mail, video conferencing, and building rudimentary Web sites to share applications. But it became clear that people needed a good, clear, sophisticated way of working with each other in a network."

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Wilsker looked into p-to-p technology offerings that promised to provide just that. After taking a leap of faith nine months ago, he now says that p-to-p has delivered.

Although once regarded as a limited and illegal file-sharing application, thanks to the hype about Napster, p-to-p is now gaining ground among enterprise chief technologists who see opportunities to simplify their network infrastructure and take advantage of improved workflow. A key factor leading to the technology's increasing enterprise traction is the move by vendors to integrate p-to-p's networking capabilities with XML and Web services.

In recent weeks, Groove Networks, NextPage, and Endeavors Technology all released upgrades to their p-to-p-based offerings, giving corporate customers a chance to extend the uses of the technology into more sophisticated applications. Groove offered its Workspace Version 2.5, which deepens integration with Microsoft Outlook and improves Web services interfaces for file sharing. NextPage released Folio 4.4, upgrading its Folio software for Windows XP with enhancements to the user interface, making content access and retrieval more efficient. Endeavors added enhanced document management capabilities to its p-to-p software.

"The name of the game here is integration. Many companies as well as vendors are recognizing that having scattered office documents and databases and applications repositories has been a long-term problem," says Dana Gardner, research director of enterprise Internet infrastructure at the Boston-based Aberdeen Group. "The next big productivity boost is going to be in being able to have a much more common approach to data applications, documents, and Web content."

As p-to-p gets integrated with enterprise applications such as Web services and XML toolsets, it presents a viable path toward increased workflow productivity, Gardner says. "P-to-P allows people to get an early advantage in connectivity and integrating process content and applications."

Creating places to work

Tyco Healthcare is a Mansfield Mass.-based medical parts company and a division of Tyco International, which had $7.8 billion in sales in 2002. Tyco's Wilsker is working to bring together the 20,000 computer users at the sprawling company. Initially he deployed Groove for IT-oriented projects, such as managing the migration from Windows 98 to Windows XP, and for data-process management tasks.

"[IT] likes to feel the pain first so we can understand how the technology works," he says. And the pain hasn't been too bad. The technology planning director plans to expand deployment to other company units, including research and development, in the coming months. "We expect to use Groove worldwide," Wilsker says.

In practical terms, the p-to-p architecture offers Wilsker many advantages, including lower per-use deployment cost and a sharply reduced user learning curve, compared, for example, to setting up a mixed environment of shared applications, video conferencing, and e-mail. "Groove allowed us to create a collaborative infrastructure that enables users to quickly and efficiently create places to work," he says.

Groove Web Services APIs (application program interfaces), says Wilsker, will extend data to more and more users and applications. Features such as files, discussions, documents, calendars, and online presence can be tied into Groove Workspace. Plus, the integration of XML and Web services offered in Groove's Version 2.5 will enable easier collaboration by making an increasing number of Microsoft applications available in a collaborative setting, he says.