Almost every description of P2P in the context of business infrastructure starts something like this: "P2P is notorious for..." This comes from many years of people associating P2P with illegal downloading, to the point that the terms are now almost synonymous. Such an association is inherently unfair, however, because no one equates TCP/IP and crime, despite the fact that TCP/IP is the protocol of choice for many cyber-criminals.

Rather than resorting to out-dated and inaccurate definitions, let's start from scratch and consider the following: what is P2P, really? What is it good for? How can we use it to save and earn money?

P2P stands for "peer to peer." Put simply, it's one method of establishing communication between parties. Uploading information to Google Docs to share it with colleagues is not P2P, but sending the same information as an attachment to email is, despite the fact that mail servers are involved. In this context, P2P doesn't mean "serverless communication" so much as "communication that is perceived to be serverless." Like email, instant messaging (IM) is considered P2P technology because even though servers are used quite extensively, there is no explicit act of uploading data to an intermediate location. With both email and IM, servers are used behind the scenes, so to speak.