Common Engineering Criteria The Microsoft® Common Engineering (CEC) establishes a common set of engineering requirements across the company’s infrastructure server software products, in the effort to help customers improve reliability, security, and manageability while reducing total cost of ownership. What is the Common Engineering Roadmap? The vision is to deliver a common set of services across all Microsoft server products. The Common Engineering Roadmap outlines the steps Microsoft is taking to reach this goal. All products are evaluated against the Common Engineering Criteria. They follow a process that includes executive reviews at major milestones and the publication of progress reports before each product launch. Products that meet the criteria earn the Windows Server System Engineered label. Since the start of this initiative in 2003, the list of compliant products has grown. Now the majority of infrastructure server products are near complete compliance. The goal is for all infrastructure server products to be compliant. Which criteria are the highest priorities? Customers told us they want infrastructure server products to deliver new business value; to minimize IT cost and complexity while keeping the business running; and to allow them to be confident in their Microsoft investment. The Common Engineering Criteria address these themes. Get your own copy of the Complete Common Engineering Report.
What are the specific criteria, and which products meet them? Along with innovations come greater expectations. Since this initiative began in 2003, new criteria have been added each year. You can read a detailed explanation of the CEC, organized by year. Or get an overview of product compliance from the CEC Report. | 
