Test Center Comparisons are rated on a 10-point scale. The weightings used for scoring Comparisons reflect the relative importance to our readers of each scored category, based on feedback from reader surveys and our knowledge. For example, if we determine that management is more important than performance for a given solution, then we'll assign a greater weighting to the management category in the Report Card. The InfoWorld Test Center differentiates itself by providing the most real-world approach to testing. Our tests, which are conducted by the most knowledgeable analysts in the industry, focus on products and solutions as they are used and exist in IT environments.
Many labs run artificial tests to analyze products, making the results less valuable to our readers.
To duplicate the real-world scenarios of our readers, we regularly transform the Test Center to resemble our readers' enterprises. The tests we run in our Test Center are typical of tasks or activities that you'll find running in the real world and address a true business problem. We call our automated tests workloads, instead of benchmarks. Workloads represent real-world processing tasks, while benchmarks are used for pure performance measurement. Workloads allow us to test other important criteria besides performance, such as scalability, fault tolerance, security, and management.