In this interview with Artima, Oracle's Steven Harris describes why performance should be a key consideration when architecting an application:
http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/javaone_2007_steven_harris.htmlTo what extent, and in what situations, do you consider the ability to scale an application's performance when making initial architectural decisions or when choosing an enterprise framework? Have you encountered situations when an application had to be re-architected because the old architecture could no longer scale?