MILAN is a research project aiming to provide end-to-end services for transparent utilization and management of networked resources. The ultimate goal of the project is to build a software environment emulating a collection of virtual machines on a non-dedicated, unpredictable, distributed platform. The scope of the project is large and it encopasses a gamut of approaches from fundamental research through prototypes, up to working usable systems. It is the fundamental tenet of the research approach that only COTS components will be used. MILAN will provide software running in user space assuming standard hardware, operatings systems, and compilers. MILAN stands for "Metacomputing in Large Asynchronous Networks," to remind us of some of the ultimate goals and challenges of our research. The project is a joint effort between New York University and Arizona State University.