Work on this thesis was made possible by many people to whom I am deeply grateful. I cannot possibly thank enough my wife Jasmina and my daughter Vedrana whose love and support never faltered during almost three years of our geographic separation. And without the selfless support to our family from my dear parents and my brother Žarko during that time, I wouldn't have come to the stage of writing these lines. My special thanks go to my thesis advisor, Manuel Carro who has taken me on board in the first place, and then given me help, guidance and support in every imaginable way -scientifically, professionally, and personally -for the whole duration of the exciting journey through the doctoral studies. I couldn't have possibly hoped for more. I am glad of having had the opportunity to work on most of my publications together with Manuel Hermenegildo, the director of the CLIP laboratory as well as of the IMDEA Software institute, a person of truly dazzling intelligence and seemingly inexhaustible energy. During the greatest part of my PhD studies I worked within and was funded by S-Cube, a EU Network of Excellence project on software and services. It was indeed an excellent and inspiring environment for doing and aligning service-related research. For very fruitful discussions, hospitality during my study stays, and joint research work I am especially thankful to Martin Treiber, Schahram Dustdar and Philipp Leitner of the