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One of the major problems in building large-scale enterprise systems is anticipating the performance of the eventual solution before it has been built. The fundamental software engineering problem becomes more difficult when the systems are built on component technology. This paper investigates the feasibility of providing a practical solution to this problem. An empirical approach is proposed to determine the performance characteristics of component-based applications by benchmarking and profiling. Based on observation, a model is constructed to act as a performance predictor for a class of applications based on the specific component technology. The performance model derived from empirical measures is necessary to make the problem tractable and the results relevant. A case study applies the performance model to an application prototype implemented by two component infrastructures: CORBA and J2EE.