This article presents an extension of the Fractal component model targeted at programming applications to be run on computing grids: the Grid Component Model (GCM). First, to address the problem of deployment of components on the Grid, deployment strategies have been defined. Then, as Grid applications often result from the composition of a lot of parallel (sometimes identical) components, composition mechanisms to support collective communications on a set of components are introduced. Finally, because of the constantly evolving environment and requirements for Grid applications, the GCM defines a set of features intended to support component autonomicity. All these aspects are developed in this paper with the challenging objective to ease the programming of Grid applications, while allowing GCM components to also be the unit of deployment and management.