If you want to do more advanced thing with your processes while its running such as running it in the background, querying performance, setting security, synchronizing or whatever, you would need to look into native OS calls to accomplish that. For example, on a Windows machine, you could use the CreateProcess method in the Windows.h header http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682425%28VS.85%29.aspx
Edit:
Just realized something in your question, if you are suggesting that you wish for your application to start another process, then have your application close while the other process continues to run, the _exec functions do exactly this. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/431x4c1w%28VS.80%29.aspx