The engineering life cycle for complex systems design and development requires the set-up of adequate and controlled processes involving different partners and disciplines. The design integration and the final physical/functional integration and qualification imply a high degree of cross-interaction among all partners. This book documents the outcome of a European project on distributed system environments by presenting the results of the user's requirements analysis and assessing the current available technology such as collaboration systems design, analysis, and verification; middleware; product data and workflow management; multicast communication; network QoS management; and groupware. Besides technical results, the book surveys and classifies existing products and tools for collaborative distributed systems engineering.