Recent developments under the umbrella of Future Internet offer new concepts and mechanisms to support a new generation of advanced collaborative networks. Particularly relevant is the consolidation of the Internet of Services and its associated infrastructures and related concepts such as service ecologies and service parks. Complementarily, recent progress on Cyber Physical Systems induce new virtualization possibilities for resources and capabilities, leading to notions of Industrial Internet, Sensing Enterprise, Internet of Events, etc.

Moving from services provided by a single entity to more complex or integrated multi-stakeholder services requires new approaches in dynamic service composition and thus the effective consideration of the “collaboration” perspective. This is a fundamental step in reducing the gap between the notions of software service and business service.

Collaborative Networks naturally benefit from such new possibilities, but they also bring important elements to the future Internet at various levels, including structural and behavioural models, value systems and value creation, and the business perspective. On the other hand, development of the so-called Services Science adds clarification to the semantics of the service concept in which context synergies with collaborative networks need to be further explored.

The accumulated body of empiric knowledge and the size of the involved research community in Collaborative Networks provide the basis for leveraging the potential of new concepts and mechanisms in addressing big societal challenges and consolidating the scientific discipline on “Collaborative Networks”. Such discipline is strongly multidisciplinary and thus PRO-VE Working Conference is designed to offer a major opportunity to mix contributions from Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Management or Socio-Human communities.    

The main theme of PRO-VE’12 focuses thus on crucial aspects to empower Collaborative Networks as a main actor of change in society.