Performance testing article in QAThreads:

"Today, applications are getting heavy, no. of users accessing the application is increasing and a result of this importance of performance testing is increasing. On the other hand fast servers delivering a great performance against millions of simultaneous users are available in the market.

The problem is that these servers don’t come cheap and also the software required and experts available in this field. In this kind of scenario when an organization think of carrying out a performance testing of an application lot of factors need to be considered from the basics of performance testing to which tool to be used and how it should be used. In this article "The declining importance of performance testing should change your priorities"  Robert L. Bogue discusses performance testing with respect to today's changing face of software and its accessibility."

Its worth reading the comments on this article, many of which are better written and more informative thatn the article itself.