The distributed component object model (distributed COM) provides a standard conceptual framework for creating, managing, and accessing object-based components that offer services to other objects and applications. Distributed COM components can be used to expose both data and services to programs created by other vendors, and to write applications in such a way as to take advantage of services provided by others. You can also extend or customize basic distributed COM services to suit the needs of your objects and applications while guaranteeing that they continue to work with other COM objects.
Distributed COM components can exist as parts of an operating system or application, or as stand-alone entities, and, with the introduction of Windows NT 4.0, can be implemented across a network. Distributed COM naturally extends the COM programming model and constructs introduced by OLE 2.0 to work across a network.