A computing system architecture is based upon a peer-to-peer, asynchronous model. The architecture specifies a set of infrastructure facilities that comprise an inter-prise operating system. The inter- prise operating system provides all the facilities that make application coding as easy in the peer-to-peer asynchronous model as it is in a hierarchical, synchronous model. Services, which reside in containers, are linked asynchronously by an inter-prise bus and use data from a virtual data store.