P2P Business Applications: Future and Directions

Since the launch of Napster in June 1999, peer-to-peer technology (P2P) has become synonymous with file sharing applications that are the bane of the recording industry due to copyright infringements and consequent revenue losses. P2P promised a revolution in business computing which has not arrived. It has become synonymous with illegal file sharing and copyright violations. Meanwhile the information systems industry has undergone a paradigm change, and we are supposedly living in a world of cloud computing and mobile devices. It is pertinent to examine if P2P, as a revolutionary technology, is still relevant and important today and will be in future. One has to examine this question in the context of the fact that P2P technologies have matured but have however had limited adoption outside file sharing in the consumer space. This paper provides a detailed analysis of P2P computing and offers some propositions to answer the question of the relevancy of P2P. It is proposed that P2P is still a relevant technology but may be reshaped in the coming years in a different form as compared to what exists today.