Method of providing system design

1. A computer implemented method of providing a design of a system comprising the steps of:

receiving a relative performance specification for the system; and

returning a system design that is expected to perform at about the relative performance specification.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising receiving an existing system design and wherein the system design is based at least in part on making an incremental change to the existing system design.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising presenting an interface that provides a relative performance choice for the system design and wherein a particular selection of the relative performance choice forms the relative performance specification.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the interface further presents a relative cost choice for the system design and further comprising accepting a particular relative cost selection.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the relative performance choice presented by the interface is a primary relative performance choice and the interface further presents one or more secondary relative performance choices.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the step of receiving the relative performance specification for the primary relative performance choice further comprises receiving a secondary relative performance specification for at least one of the secondary relative performance choices.

7. The method of claim 5 further comprising returning available ranges for at least some of the secondary relative performance choices.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

receiving a secondary relative performance specification for at least one of the available ranges; and

returning a revised system design in response to the secondary relative performance selection.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising accessing a database to determine the system design that is expected to perform at about the relative performance specification and wherein the database comprises records, each record comprises system characteristics a candidate system design, and a relative performance.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein a particular candidate system design for a particular record is determined by an automated design tool or by a human designer.

11. The method of claim 9 wherein the system characteristics comprise an application type and a metric value.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the system characteristics further comprise supplemental system characteristics, the supplemental system characteristics are selected from the group of an application scale, an application program, an industry segment, a particular solution kind, and a combination thereof.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising measuring a particular metric value for an existing system, comparing the particular metric value to the records of the database, and returning a percentile relative performance for the particular metric value.

14. The method of claim 9 further comprising employing a benchmarking system to capture relative performance data for the database.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the benchmarking system employs:

automatic reporting from service sites to a neutral data collection service; or

automatic reporting between the service sites according to a sharing agreement between entities; or

industry surveys; or

a combination thereof.

16. The method of claim 9 wherein the database is available by way of the Internet or by way of a subscription distribution.

17. The method of claim 9 further comprising receiving a percentile relative performance query and returning a list of businesses that meets the percentile relative performance query.

18. The method of claim 9 further comprising receiving an optimal costfbenefit query and returning a percentile relative performance rating that resides at a knee of a relative performance/cost curve.

19. A computer implemented method of providing a design of a system comprising the steps of:

presenting an interface that provides a relative performance choice for the system design, the interface selected from a graphical user interface, a menu interface, a command line interface, and a combination thereof;

receiving a relative performance specification for the system in response to a particular selection of the relative performance choice;

accessing a database to determine a system design that is expected to perform at about the relative performance specification, the database comprising records, each record comprising system characteristics and a candidate system design; and

returning the system design.

20. A computer readable medium comprising computer code for implementing a method of providing a design of a system, the method of providing the design of the system comprising the steps of:

receiving a relative performance specification for the system; and

returning a particular system design that is expected to perform at about the relative performance specification.