ABC, in cooperation with an international company, supplied, installed and provided ongoing technical support and maintenance for the Syrian Higher Education Research Network (SHERN), which is an intranet network that connects the four Syrian universities and the Ministry of Higher Education. SHERN was built through the support of the Ministry of Higher Education and UNESCO. The underlying infrastructure of this network, which has its own gateway to the Internet, is expected to facilitate the development of much needed intranet-based academic applications, such as tele-education, course content, sharing and developing, tele-working and research.