At the height of the dot-com boom in the mid-1990's, many companies burst onto the scene as Application Services Providers (ASPs) hoping to capitalize on the wave of Internet success stories, and rake in some loot. Aside from the unfortunate market collapse that followed, ASPs had other issues to deal with such as training staff to effectively build and manage a secure, reliable and highly available operation. Today, Web-enabling architecture is prevalent, particularly since Web services have become a staple for most applications, and the growing pains of ASPs past are feeding businesses everywhere with a hunger for successful implementations for 24x7 applications. As Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) themes spread across organizations, applications are now reaching wider audiences than ever before. Gone are the days where you can sling some code, ship product, and cross your fingers.