I’ve often heard people at Microsoft talk about the common engineering criteria – usually when stating that one of the criteria is that a management pack for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 must be produced with each new server product (at release). A few minutes back, I stumbled across Microsoft’s pages which describe the full common engineering criteria and the associated report on common engineering criteria progress.
Also worth a read is the Windows Server product roadmap and the Windows service pack roadmap.
Finally, for an opportunity to provide feedback on Windows Server and to suggest new features, there is the Windows Server feedback page (although there’s no guarantee that a suggestion will be taken forward).
Good post, interesting links.