E-business competitive measurements

A method for doing evaluation in a network environment, said method comprising:

• mapping a transaction step in a first application to:
• a similar transaction step in a second application;
• a current threshold value;
• and
• a supporting application;
• applying one or more scripts for the transaction step to a set of probes to collect performance measures for the first and second applications;
• inputting the performance measures for said first and second applications to a report generator;
• outputting a performance comparison report based on said mapping and said performance measures;
• wherein said mapping, said inputting, and said outputting are performed for a plurality of transaction steps in said first application and a plurality of transaction steps in said second application;
• and
• establishing at least one new threshold value for said first application, based on said performance measures.

A method for doing evaluation in a network environment, the method comprising:

• providing a generic task list comprising a plurality of tasks that are frequently performed by end users;
• applying the generic task list to a first application and a second application, wherein applying the generic task list to a first application and a second application comprises, for each task within the plurality of tasks:
• mapping a transaction step in the first application to:
• a similar transaction step in the second application by generic task group from a customer's perspective;
• a current threshold value;
• and
• a supporting application;
• applying one or more scripts for the transaction step to a set of probes to collect performance measures for the first and second applications;
• inputting the statistics and the performance measures for the first and second applications to a report generator;
• and
• outputting a performance comparison report based on the mapping, the statistics, and said performance measures;
• establishing at least one new threshold value for the first business process, based on the performance measures;
• receiving data from a production environment;
• and
• deriving statistics from the data;
• wherein outputting the performance comparison report further comprises:
• associating a representation of a given transaction step in the first application with representations of:
• the similar transaction step in the second application;
• a current threshold value;
• a supporting application;
• and
• a corresponding subset of the statistics.