This talk addresses how agent-oriented technologies may be used to develop software systems for real world business applications. The first part of the presentation introduces the challenge of developing software for real world business scenarios. The second part of the presentation introduces to the audience a selection of agent-oriented software development methodologies. This part also aims to discover their advantages, disadvantages, and current shortcomings with respect to the challenge of developing large software systems. The third part of the speech presents an overview of business applications that have been developed by using agent-oriented technology. The fourth, and final part of the speech presents to the audience a new basic research program on agent-oriented software development, which will be funded by the German National Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - DFG) from 2000 to 2006.