The second category of Foundation functions invoked by application developers is the Utilities. These utilities provide services that will be needed by most applications built using the San Francisco frameworks. The utilities provide 'completed function' and are designed to be used as is, rather than being extended or modified.

Several different types of Utilities are provided. Administration supports the definition and maintenance of Application Security and System Configuration information. Conflict Control allows a system administrator to block commands that should not be executed at the same time from running concurrently. The Installation utility helps application developers install and maintain the frameworks, and applications built using the frameworks. The Audit Trail utility provides a way for application developers to keep a history of which users accessed which objects.

Many of the utilities will be provided by using function that already exists in the operating systems or other products. San Francisco will ensure that the functions are well integrated and provide a consistent look and feel for users. And, as was the case with the kernel services, the Utilities will provide additional capability when needed. An example of this is in the area of Application Security where the utility adds support for items such as grouping users and the methods they can access. Another example is in the area of Conflict Control, which allows administrators to block the concurrent execution of two sets of logic that should not be executing at the same time.