In 1983, with mainframes in decline, Carnegie Mellon initiated a joint venture with IBM to develop a vast distributed computing environment for their campus. This collaboration was organized as the Information Technology Center. ITC generated many new technologies, of which the Andrew File System (now called AFS with no expansion for the abbreviation) is one of the most well known.

"The project envisioned a dramatic increase in computing power made possible by the widespread deployment of powerful personal workstations. Our charter was to develop a mechanism that would enable the users of these workstations to collaborate and share data effectively." -- M. Satyanarayanan, IEEE Computer May 1990, Vol. 23, No. 5 page 9.