The Microsoft Robotics Studio Runtime provides a runtime environment, aka a node, for creating, hosting, managing, and connecting services within that node and across the network so that they can be composed into applications. The result is a distributed application model where nodes are peers rather than clients and servers and data is exchanged bi-directionally on demand instead of through polling. The runtime is written in C# 2.0 and consists of two parts: The Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) that enables coordination of messages without the use of manual threading, locks, semaphores, etc. The CCR is based on asynchronous message passing and provides an execution context for services including a set of high-level primitives for synchronizing messages. Decentralized System Services (DSS) that provides a service hosting environment and a set of basic services facilitating tasks such as debugging, logging, monitoring, security, discovery, and data persistence. The Microsoft Robotics Studio Runtime has been designed to be lightweight and flexible and is possible to use in a wide variety of environments applicable to robotics.