A fundamental problem in distributed computing is to map activities such as computation or data transfer onto resources that meet requirements for performance, cost, security, or other quality of service metrics. The creation of such mappings requires negotiation among application and resources to discover, reserve, acquire, configure, and monitor resources. Current resource management approaches tend to specialize for specific resource classes, and address coordination across resources only in a limited fashion. We present a new approach that overcomes these difficulties.We define a resource management model that distinguishes three kinds of resource-independent service level agreements (SLAs), formalizingag reements to deliver capability, perform activities, and bind activities to capabilities, respectively. We also define a Service Negotiation and Acquisition Protocol (SNAP) that supports reliable management of remote SLAs. Finally, we explain how SNAP can be deployed within the context of the Globus Toolkit.