The '''Distributed Computing Environment''' (DCE) is a software system developed indevelopedin the early 1990s by a consortium that included [[Apollo Computer]] (later part of [[Hewlett-Packard]]), [[IBM]], [[Digital Equipment Corporation]], and others. The DCE supplies a framework and toolkit for developing [[client/server]] applications. The framework includes a [[remote procedure call]] (RPC) mechanism known as [[DCE/RPC]], a naming (directory) service, a time service, an [[authentication]] service and a [[distributed file system]] (DFS) known as [[DCE Distributed File System|DCE/DFS]].
DCE was a big step in direction to standardisation of architectures, which were manufacturer dependent before. Similar to the [[OSI model]], DCE was not granted success; the underlying concepts however, prevailed.
