P2P Innovation in Startups

This week we also saw the launch of Wuala, a P2P Cloud Storage solution (our review here).

Earlier, we reviewed a P2P approach to search (Faroo) and a P2P approach to video sharing (Metaaso).

With the exception of Skype, these are all tiny little start-ups. Interestingly, they have all originated outside America:

Skype - telephony - Estonia
Wuala - storage - Switzerland
Faroo - search - Germany
Metaaso - video - India.

This geographic origin may not be coincidental.

You need $ gazillions to be a Cloud Computing Platform. Those server farms cost a lot. Skimping, or misjudging demand, leads to outages, slow response and other confidence-killers. This is a game for the big boys - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, AT&T, Sun. These are all American firms, with access to plenty of capital. Disruptive innovation usually comes from start-ups that are starved for capital. You replace capital with technical innovation. That was true for Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, AT&T, Sun as well when they started.

That is why I have believed for some time that P2P is the next big disruptive technology at the infrastructure level.

P2P and Bigcos

Disruptive technology sometimes needs support from big companies as well. Fortunately for P2P, 3 very big companies would benefit greatly from more use of P2P as infrastructure - Microsoft, Apple and Intel. It's a great way to mop up those underutilized desktop CPU cycles. And attack the cloud computing incumbents.

Historically, P2P start-ups have tended to focus on music sharing and have been hurt by legal issues, but they have been fine technically. Skype makes P2P respectable and proves that scalability does not have to be an issue. Skype is taking on one the biggest and most entrenched industries in the world and millions of people increasingly rely on Skype as a mission critical alternative to landlines or cellphones.

P2P: Next Big Thing for Infrastructure

P2P infrastructure could play very well behind the enterprise firewall. It reduces CIO security fears about too many cloud based apps outside the firewall. This is important for P2P start-ups. They would need a lot of capital to go to market entirely with a consumer/SOHO offering. If they can get enterprise adoption at the same time, then they can accelerate cash flow and reduce need for funding.

Watch the P2P space. It's the next big wave of innovation at the infrastructure level.

"Some facts:
MetaASO is the name of the Company. Mermaid is the name of the Product Suite.
We started in Oct 2002 and our Release 1 happened 1.5 years back in limited circle beta. Full public Beta Release 2 happened a few weeks back.
There are 5 founders and the engineering team is of 20 people.
We can do a belle dance in front of customers but we never say 'Give us work.' We just mention softly that besides giving away software for free we also develop custom P2P softwares for organizations. And that typically costs around $300-$400,000 per software we develop. We have 3 enterprise customers. This is besides the money we make from ads on our softwares.We are not proud that in the 6th year of operation we have 3 enterprise customers. We could have made a lot of money by providing services but that would make us a yet another services company. Which we are not and don't want to be. So just enough to sustain ourselves, but our emphasis is on product development. We plan to do away with all services very soon and concentrate purely on product development."

This is smart self-funding. I bet they learn a lot from each enterprise job as well as getting cash. This is the classic "3 custom jobs to a product, iterating and generalizing on each project" that the enterprise software business has been built on for decades.

MetaASO stumbled at the first hurdle for me, which was that you need Silverlight and that means a PC (I use a Mac). So I would be interested in any first hand experience with their product. PC is still the best shot for volume, so I don't doubt the strategic wisdom of going that route.

The other requirements:

"Mermaid softwares can be used on the LAN e.g. at office, campus etc. with out any internet connection. To use them on the internet you require a "Globally Routable IPV6 Address" for your computer. Ask your ISP for one and it should get done within 15-20 minutes. They will do whatever is required. You don't have to do anything.

Apart from that a powerful computer always helps. And even though Mermaid softwares will run on 256MB RAM systems 1GB is good and 2 GB is awesome.

As far as the internet connection speed goes. We recommend a minimum of 256Kbps (for all our audio/video based applications) for the rest 128Kbps would do. But nowadays its best to get a 512Kbps or 1MBps connection if you are starting your own TV Station."

So one can see that an "enterprise first" strategy makes sense for MetaASO. I am not sure about getting "Globally Routable IPV6 Address" from your ISP. Has anybody had experience with that?

Get past those hurdles and the big message is "no servers needed." That's right, no supernodes, no nothing. Real Peer To Peer. Your very own TV station. Sounds like YouTube -- except you don't need a server farm costing gazillions.

This is the same idea that got me excited about Faroo. Two other similarities: both use Microsoft base technologies (no surprise, given the P2P focus), and both originate outside USA (Faroo from Germany, MetaASO from India). The latter maybe to do with the fact that funding is a bit tougher if you don't live in the Valley, so you tend to focus on things that are big enough to warrant the years of bootstrapping.

Go to MetaASO and check it out. Listen to their welcome message on their Pickle Player (no download). Is real serverless P2P viable for search or video?