COM:

Delivering on the Promises of Component Technology

Welcome to Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) technologies Web site. This site encompasses information about COM -based technologies such as Distributed COM (DCOM) , COM+ , Microsoft® Transaction Server (MTS) , ActiveX® Controls , and more.

COM is the most widely used component software model in the world. It provides the richest set of integrated services, the widest choice of easy-to-use tools, and the largest set of available applications. In addition, it provides the only currently viable market for reusable, off-the-shelf, client and server components.

Learn more about how COM and COM-based technologies function, by perusing the articles in the press, white papers, and presentations available on the COM Web site . Or, read case studies to discover how customers are building solutions based on COM technologies.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of the Component Object Model (COM) in the Microsoft environment. COM underlies a large majority of the new code developed for Windows® and Windows NT® operating systems, whether created by Microsoft or by others. Here are some of the facts about COM today:

COM is in use on well over 150 million systems worldwide.
COM consists of a well-defined, mature, stable, and freely available specification, as well as a reference implementation, which has been widely tested and adopted worldwide as a de-facto standard.
COM provides the richest set of existing services for applications today, as well as the largest set of development tools available from a wide variety of vendors.
COM supports the only currently viable component marketplace. The market for third-party components based on COM has been estimated at US$670 million dollars in 1998, with a projected 65 percent compound annual growth rate, growing to approximately US$3 billion dollars by 2001. (Source: Giga Information Group)
COM supports thousands of available applications, including all of today's highest volume applications. Major system vendors such as Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Siemens-Nixdorf, and Silicon Graphics have announced plans to ship COM on UNIX and other operating systems within the year, with more vendor commitments on the way.

The reason for the broad use of COM technologies is simple: for a tremendously wide range of problems, COM allows the creation of better software. Explore the links on the left for more details.