Object technology in the extended enterprise

Object Technology (OT) has been a part of IS application development strategies for over twenty years. With commercial availability of Smalltalk and C++, and the evolution of OT analysis and design methodologies together with their support in the form of CASE tools, OT has been incorporated into software development processes with greater benefits experienced as a function of its more pragmatic application. The business environment in which OT has matured has evolved significantly since the 1970´s. Businesses typically operated monolithically and self-contained with their own purchasing, accounting, and human resource groups (among others), and centralized corporate IS groups that served as architects, implementers, and maintainers of customized mission critical software systems. IS groups effectively comprised closed software development organizations that totally controlled software systems core to corporate business. OT was used in this type of closed organization principally to implement custom business applications. Given the changes in the evolving business environment it is beneficial to re-examine Object Technology as it may apply to the extended enterprise