http://www.soamag.com The SOA Magazine is a monthly online publication provided by SOA Systems Inc. and Prentice Hall/PearsonPTR and is officially associated with the "Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl." SOA en-us Copyright 2006-2007, SOA Systems Inc. http://www.soamag.com/I6/0407-3.asp The ability to effectively manage and monitor application performance is emerging as a new critical business imperative. With the mass adoption of SOA and the wide-spread deployment of enterprise service-oriented solutions, what steps must companies take to reduce application downtime? Traditional application performance management (APM) methods don't adequately address the constantly-changing nature of distributed environments. They simply don't take into account the layers of complexities that underlie multi-platform, multi-vendor, and even multi-company solutions. This article will examine the concept of "modeling" an application's architecture in support of its eventual performance management. It will also explore how automating the APM process for service-oriented applications can reduce the risk and effort associated with the management of application performance. (First published in The SOA Magazine Issue VI, April 2007.) SOA http://www.soamag.com/contributors/bio-cfarrell.asp#When:04.04.07