Program Overview

The IMSE program (120 ECTS) is organised in four successive phases over two years, each providing the core knowledge and further advancing the skills of the incoming students.

The phases are as follows:

1. Development and monitoring of software services (University of Stuttgart)
2. Analysis of service enabled business processes (University of Crete)
3. Design of software services (Tilburg University)
4. Thesis: Services Science Topics (any location inside/outside Europe)

The first year comprises the first two phases: during the first phase students learn about middleware platform- and programming models to realise software services, while during the second phase they are trained in analysis and design of software services that realise global business processes.

In the second year, the emphasis shifts towards socio-economic analysis of service-enabled processes in service networks, and optimizing service network performance in terms of business-level key performance indicators (KPIs). The second semester of year two is devoted to thesis work.

Global orientation

Cooperation with both industry and research institutes, links the IMSE program in a controlled and sustainable manner with the professional sector. IMSE is not only fueled by knowledge and expertise from top quality research institutes but also by the imput from leading companies located on different continents, which again underlines the global orientation of the program.

Course overview

The IMSE program progresses from service middleware up to the layer of service networks, where courses in higher-level layers built on prerequisite courses in lower levels. An overview of courses can be found in the table below:

Table 1: Partners and courses per IMSE layer

Layer	Partner	Course Themes
Service Network	University of Crete	Digital economics; introduction to service networks and engineering; business processes and network simulations; internet knowledge management and innovation.
	University of Stuttgart	Data-warehousing and Analytics
	Tilburg University	Business Process Management (elective)
Business Process Management	University of Crete	Business processes, communities and business transformation; business processes and network simulations
	Tilburg University	Service Oriented Architecture; IT Governance; Business Process Integration; Enterprise Architecture; Workflow Management (elective)
Service Composition	Tilburg University	Service Oriented Architecture
	University of Stuttgart	Workflow Management; Web Services.
Service Middleware	University of Stuttgart	Web services; Message-Based Applications; Service Management and Clouds.
Cross-cutting	Crete University	Greek for Beginners (elective)
	Tilburg University	Business Process Management (elective), Dutch for Beginners (elective), Research Methods (elective)
	University of Stuttgart	German for beginners (elective).
	S-Cube	Summer School