Patent ID: 7546360

Claim:
A system, comprising: an inter-company collaboration system comprising: a first set of one or more utility servers maintained by a first company; a first data storage mechanism associated with the first set of utility servers, the first data storage mechanism storing a set of execution data; a first set of resources residing on the first set of utility servers, wherein the first set of resources comprises an application that executes on the first set of utility servers and that operates on the set of execution data; a secure network connection between the first set of utility servers and a second company; and a first access control mechanism configured to control access, by the first company and the second company, to the first set of resources and to the secure network connection, wherein access to the first set of resources is limited to specific authorized individuals that are associated with the first company and specific authorized individuals that are associated with the second company; and an isolated system that is communicatively coupled to the collaboration system, comprising: a second set of one or more utility servers maintained by the first company; a second set of resources residing on the second set of utility servers, wherein the second set of resources comprises the application and a set of debugging resources; a second data storage mechanism associated with the second set of utility servers, the second data storage mechanism including: a first storage portion that contains data that is shared with the collaboration system, including the set of execution data; and a second storage portion that contains data that is private to the isolated system, wherein the data that is private to the isolated system includes source code associated with the application; and a second access control mechanism configured to control access to the second set of utility servers, wherein access to the second set of utility servers is limited to specific authorized individuals that are associated only with the first company; wherein the application is executed on the second set of utility servers and operates on the set of execution data stored in the first storage portion of the second data storage mechanism, and wherein the set of debugging resources is used by one or more authorized individuals associated with the first company to debug the application.