Microsoft Servers Common Engineering Criteria: Home

The CEC program: Improving our server products and technologies for customers

The Microsoft Common Engineering Criteria (CEC) program establishes a set of engineering requirements across all Microsoft server products. The goal of the CEC program is to reduce the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) through improved integration, manageability, security, reliability, and other critical infrastructure attributes that are expected by our customers.

What is the vision for common engineering criteria?

Our vision is that all Microsoft server software follows a consistent set of engineering and quality standards with the goal of reducing the TCO for our customers. The CEC program provides a set of standards to enable the “Better Together” experience for Microsoft server products.

All server products are evaluated against common engineering criteria. The process includes integrating the CEC program into the product development life cycles, incorporating executive reviews at major milestones, and publishing progress reports before each product launch.

Since the start of this initiative in 2003, the list of compliant products has grown every year. As of January 2010, all Microsoft server products comply with the common engineering criteria.

What are our customers' highest priorities?

Customers tell us that they want server products to minimize IT costs and complexity, maximize uptime, deliver new business value, and allow them to be confident in their Microsoft investment. The CEC program addresses these needs.

What are the common engineering criteria, and which products meet them?

For more information, you can read an overview about the common engineering criteria or download a document that explains the CEC program in detail. You can view the CEC scorecards and filter them by product or by technical area. You can also download the complete CEC report.

CEC Overview

Read a description of the common engineering criteria and the technical areas that they apply to.

CEC Program Details

Read a detailed description of the Microsoft Common Engineering Criteria program.

CEC Scorecards by Product

Look up scorecards for the Microsoft server products that you own or are planning to deploy.

CEC Scorecards by Technical Area

Look up scorecards for an individual criterion that extends across all Microsoft server products.

CEC Downloads

Download a full report about the common engineering criteria compliance for a server product or across all Microsoft server products.