Modeled after Inktomi's successful Web caching strategy, Pointera is offering a private-label hosted service that will support file sharing for other Web sites. With the Pointera Sharing Engine, users can find and swap Microsoft Office files, PDF documents, MP3 music files, video clips and images through a Web browser, without having to download or install client software as is required by Napster. Pointera refreshes its database every 30 seconds to ensure that files are kept current. Pointera also supports e-mail and chat. For Web publishers, Pointera charges a set-up fee and then negotiates ad revenue sharing arrangements.
Portals pay a monthly fee that is less than a penny per query or per user.
Next year, Pointera plans to offer an enterprise version of its service for corporate intranets. However, Pointera doesn't have a solution for corporate network managers worried about the bandwidth demands of file-sharing applications. It's going to get a whole lot worse. He says Pointera minimizes bandwidth concerns by searching users' subnets first for files before going out across the Internet. The division employs 10 people.