The focus of the business agenda is shifting from processes to relationships. Although business processes remain important, the strategic issues for many large organizations have to do with external and internal relationships.

The theoretical relevance is also well-understood. There are several substantial research programmes focused on this area, including the EPSRC-funded programme on Systems Engineering for Business Process Change (SEBPC).

Meanwhile, there is a serious lack of broad understanding even among so-called experts. The object experts mostly don’t understand components, the component experts often don’t understand the full implications of distribution, and hardly any of them have any real appreciation of business issues. UML is weak in all three areas: components, distribution and business. (It has some other weaknesses as well, but this isn’t going to be a book about UML.)

There are also lots of books about business strategy and process change. These generally display an equally feeble grasp of IT.

Within "user" companies: business executives, IT executives and managers, strategic planners and strategy consultants, process managers and change management consultants, IT consultants, project managers, business analysts, systems analysts, systems architects, IT trainers, tools and methods suppliers.

My guess is that within universities, the book would be relevant to final year undergraduate or masters degree students in information/systems/software management/engineering or computer/computing science/studies.

Within business schools, the book would be relevant to courses on strategy, business process change and IT.

It would also be relevant to researchers in information systems, distributed systems, systems architecture, in computing departments, as well as information, systems and technology management researchers in business schools.