Building an e-marketplace on a peer-to-peer infrastructure

Existing e-marketplaces, built on traditional client–server architectures, severely restrict the scope and dynamics of Business-to-Business (B2B) interactions. Peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures will provide far more decentralized infrastructures, while allowing a much wider range of business patterns to take place. On one hand, the interaction over a P2P network resembles the way real-world enterprises perform business with each other. On the other hand, a small set of simple services is enough to support complex business processes over a P2P infrastructure. Incidentally, most of the required technology is readily available, although it may be necessary to bring in an appropriate integration of different concepts. The paper discusses the implementation of essential services for P2P e-marketplaces, based on one of the leading P2P platforms, and illustrates its benefits by applying the P2P approach to a vendor of industrial equipment.