  Stochastic service systems describe situations in which customers compete for
service from scarce resources. Think of check-in lines at airports, waiting
rooms in hospitals or queues in supermarkets, where the scarce resource is
human manpower. Next to these traditional settings, resource sharing is also
important in large-scale service systems such as the internet, wireless
networks and cloud computing facilities. In these virtual environments,
geographical conditions do not restrict the system size, paving the way for the
emergence of large-scale resource sharing networks. This thesis investigates
how to design large-scale systems in order to achieve the dual goal of
operational efficiency and quality-of-service, by which we mean that the system
is highly occupied and hence efficiently utilizes the expensive resources,
while at the same time, the level of service, experienced by customers, remains
high.
