The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for providing update notifications on distributed application objects. When a new version of an object is created that another object depends on, a notification can be added to the dependent object to alert a person that manages the dependent object of the creation of the updated object. Dependent objects can include template objects, such as virtual machine template objects that refer to virtual disk objects and service template objects that refer to one or more virtual machine template objects, as well as service instance objects that represent service instances that are instantiated from template objects. Versions of objects within a family can be identified by sharing a family name and having different releases. A timestamp is used to represent when an object is released to determine which version of an object is the newest version in a family.