The paper proposes that all information systems can be treated as thermodynamic engines, therefore their performance can be measured, evaluated and compared with observable thermodynamically-related properties. This proposition suggests a simple, parsimonious method for characterizing information systems using physically measurable properties to represent their performance. Measurements of these properties can compare, both absolutely and relatively, the performance of information systems performing identical tasks, independent of their designs. These measurements are realistically accessible, come at reasonable cost, and can be performed in an acceptable amount of time. This method derives directly from the physical dependencies between the energy based and information based worlds and explores the performance of entire systems as well as their individual components.