Ask YC: Resources for building scalable, secure, distributed, componentized applications

'm in the process of defining a new architecture for my company's products (note: multiple products that are independently deployable by customers). Given our varied technologies (Java, C, etc) and distributed deployment model (some applications being SaaS and others being installed, but needing to talk to each other), I'm leaning towards a distributed web component model.<p>By "distributed web component model", what I mean is pretty similar to any other web component model (such as JSF) except that 1) we don't require components to be served from the same "application" (or even the same server) and 2) we don't require that the same technologies be used to implement them. We will use HTTP and some as-yet-undetermined authentication/authorization mechanism to tie the components together.<p>I can't imagine I'm the first to go down this path. I'm interested in any resources on how to accomplish this, how to ensure it is secure, and how to deal with identity management.<p>I have my ideas. I'd like to hear yours.