IMS ARCS is an industrial and academic cooperative program conducting research in the area of IMS technology with a view to creating a body of intellectual property for the use of the project partners, and serving as a case study on how to develop IMS Applications software.

The research group is made up of a number of universities and institutions, each with a specific area of expertise that together will make the IMS ARCS project a success. The lead partner is TSSG from Waterford IT, along with the Hamilton Institute from NUI Maynooth, IDC from University of Limerick, ASRC from Athlone IT and Fraunhofer FOKUS, Berlin.

The direction of the project comes from the stakeholder steering committee, which is a subset of the larger stakeholder group. This group meet on a quarterly basis to review progress and decide where the project should focus its efforts going forward. The stakeholders are a mix of large multinationals and SMEs, all who have a interest in IMS technology.

The vision of the project is an environment where users can be immersed in a world of diverse IP-based media, voice or data services that can be recieved off any number of network types; IMS will enable this vision!

IMS ARCS hosted a stand at  Mobile World Congress 2008 (formerly 3GSM), where the project's work to date was demonstrated.