Exceed set to leapfrog into P2P space with SmartPeer

HYDERABAD: Exceed India Pvt. Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US-based

Exceed Communications International, is all set to develop a P2P product called

SmartPeer at its new technology center in Hyderabad. Exceed’s president

Micheal S Marmor was here in India for a short visit. Here are some excerpts

from an interview:

What will be the main area of focus for your firm?

Exceed is at present focused on Internet technology firms offering e-commerce

solutions on a complete outsource basis. Exceed's integrated suite of services

and software enable businesses to cultivate online customer relationships and

sell products over the Internet more effectively. The latest initiative in P2P

space is a move towards entrenching in this space.

What is the peer-to-peer product that you are developing?

The product, instead of connecting personal computers, will connect widely

distributed corporate and industrial databases and networks. Our product would

supplement large centralized databases and make the process of querying and

receiving results, from various separate databases, faster, cheaper and

efficient.

The software application would facilitate distributed data querying across

dissimilar networks and database platforms. The software is being designed for

use by large corporates where it will be integrated into supply chain and

knowledge management applications. SmartPeer would enhance e-commerce and

m-commerce consumer and enterprise data sharing. It would also enable wireless

device users to find and purchase an item they want.

What is the technology behind SmartPeer?

SmartPeer is decentralized peer-to-peer technology. In March 2000, as one of

its e-business R&D initiatives, Exceed began exploring the potential of

using peer-to-peer technology as it applies to traditional e-business.

This research resulted in the release of a free P2P software application

called Toadnode, which has since gained strong market acceptance, customer

loyalty and recognition in the industry. Toadnode has evolved from a research

project into an extensible P2P development platform, browser for P2P networks

and an Information Management application. The SmartPeer application is being

designed to leverage the technology and architecture contained in Toadnode.

The product has adequate security measures with a point to point encryption.

Using the P2P model, computers can communicate and share files and other

resources directly, rather than through a centralized server. Each participating

computer, called a host or a node, is responsible for relaying data from other

participating computers. This eliminates the need for traditional servers and

forms a fault-tolerant network that does not depend on any central point.

What is the market segment you will focus on for the product and what is the

cost?

Initially, we would be looking forward to target the large corporates for our

product wherein it could be easily integrated into the supply chain management

or the knowledge-based management. We are planning to launch SmartPeer in the

global market by the end of this year. Potential clients of the first release of

SmartPeer include manufacturers who would benefit from a lightweight and

inexpensive application to unify their supply chain data.

SmartPeer offers a small slice of ERP- like functionality at a fraction of

the cost of large, full-featured logistics systems that have traditionally been

used to unify this type of information. SmartPeer would be retrofitted onto

existing systems to inexpensively address specific reporting and inventory

tracking needs. We are looking forward to price the product according to the

needs of the client.

What is the future prospect for technologies such as the P2P?

Many independent programmers are developing other P2P applications that

support new protocols and improved network services. Those constraints

notwithstanding, P2P technology is compelling because of its present

applications and its future prospects. Global P2P networks rely on specialized

software and communications protocols that let each host computer function as

both a client and a server.

The Gnutella protocol is of the most popular in use today. A group known as

General Purpose Location Protocol (gPulp) is working on what might become the

next version of Gnutella protocol. The gPulp group's vision is to create an

all-encompassing distributed search protocol unifying many sources of content

over the Internet.

The updated protocol will use P2P to allow virtual aggregation of information

from multiple locations, creating a dynamic, real-time, distributed search

environment. The group hopes to release a first working draft of gPulp by the

end of 2001.