The Transaction Processing Performance Council still doesn't know how to do its own abbreviation after 24 years of existence, but it does know a thing or two about getting IT hardware and software vendors together and hammering out benchmark tests and pricing metrics to help server, storage, database, and middleware buyers try to figure out what they might want to buy and what kind of value they might expect from what they buy.

The TPC was founded in 1988 following an uproar in the server racket after IBM ran its own RAMP-C COBOL benchmark test on its AS/400 and System/38 minicomputers, pitting them against a bunch of Hewlett-Packard