Stories about: Porivo Technologies

The model for peer-to-peer computing received a sizable boost last week as established companies such as Sun Microsystems Inc. worked side-by-side with startups to create an industry foothold for the emerging architecture.

Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and a slew of start-ups will meet this week to set up the structure for a working group that would give corporate customers a new way to harness the collective power of networked PCs, workstations and servers for compute- and storage-intensive jobs.

Crestone International had a problem. The Atlanta-based e-commerce consultancy couldn't find enough local designers, programmers and other IT professionals to meet its rapidly escalating workload. Experiencing triple-digit growth each year since its 1995 founding, the company needed to find a way to get extra productivity out of its current employees--or face the disagreeable prospect of turning away work. "It wasn't a matter of cutting expenses; it was a question of long-term viability," says Cal Yonker, Crestone's president.