1. A system for providing for the graceful degradation of the performance of a computer application, the system comprising: at least one sensor configured to monitor an availability and/or performance of resources associated with a computer application; a first controller and a second controller, the first controller configured to collect information from the at least one sensor and to apply rule-based criteria to the information to determine the availability and/or performance of the resources, the first controller further configured to generate at least one message to the second controller; and at least one actuator configured to modify a behavior of the computer application based on the information collected by the first controller.