[1] The three principal components of NCS were a runtime environment for remote procedure calls, a network interface definition language (NIDL) compiler, and a location broker service.
[2] The location broker differentiated NCS from similar offerings, such as the rival Open Network Computing technology from Sun Microsystems, by permitting services to be distributed in a dynamic fashion and offering the possibility of "location independence".
[3]: 46 The design and implementation of DCE/RPC, the remote procedure call mechanism in the Distributed Computing Environment, is based on NCA/NCS.
[4] In response to a request for proposals from the Open Software Foundation for distributed computing environments,[5] NCS featured in the DEcorum proposal submitted by Apollo, by then incorporated as a division within Hewlett-Packard, along with IBM, Locus Computing, Transarc, Digital Equipment Corporation and Microsoft.
[6] It also was the first implementation of universally unique identifiers,[citation needed] these being employed by the location broker to identify objects in the distributed system.