The Themis product benchmarks provide a simple method of comparing the performance of product and systems with similar properties across comparable architectures. The benchmarking can be helpful in understanding how the SIM Administrator Console corresponds to various products, both on terms of competitiveness but also in terms of integration between modern heterogeneous environments.
The purpose of the Themis product benchmarking is to address typical questions that we get asked, see below:
Are the tools user friendly?
Is the documentation clear and understandable?
Is installation straightforward?
What is the "out of the box" experience?
Is it east to understand the technical architecture?
How do the tools compare to what the competitors are offering?
The products are graded by a careful evaluation of functionality and feasibility in a number of selected areas. All systems have been tested on the same platforms and under the same environmental conditions.
The grading is done in almost a binary way - giving the evaluated function only a (+) or a (-) – thus identifying whether the grading is there or not and therefore be considered as non-compliant to a more detailed and formal capacity measurement process.
The tools have been evaluated with respect to a non-educated first-time user’s perception and his/her actual experiences with the different tools, and has therefore found the single grading most efficient. It is however recognised that continued experiences and formal education in the respective tools could change the functionality in the products, but it is believed there will be marginal impact on the final benchmarking results.
In a full evaluation process the subjectivity of any benchmarking process must be taken into account. The process can and will only base its evaluation criteria on the actual tested and documented functionalities. Thereby the process recognizes, but does not take into account possible other ‘non-tested’ similar functionality in the various different software-products. Equally there could be other tools not included in this benchmarking process, which could possibly deliver more breadth and depth into the process, but due to time-limitations these benchmarks have concentrated on the, to our best knowledge, 2006 globally market leading software products. All of these benchmarking results should always be used as only a minor part of a more complete corporate evaluation and selection process, in order to ensure the right investment in the right protection tool.
Source: Themis Software Ltd 2007