It wasn’t so long ago that Microsoft was regarded by many as a great company for delivering desktop and productivity software but not ready for prime time when it came to delivering mission-critical business software. How times have changed.

Earlier this year, when the company announced that its Server and Tools Business delivered its 15th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth, it was clear that Microsoft had earned an important place in the datacenter. With growing momentum for the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 product line, accolades for the newly-launched Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and excitement for a new generation of products that will soon hit the market, the company has clearly gained the confidence of customers around the world. But how?

The answer is both simple and complex: intensive customer focus. For Microsoft, this has meant engaging deeply with customers on multiple levels to identify key workloads, aligning marketing and engineering to deliver the capabilities customers need, and hammering away at fundamentals such as management, security, reliability and scalability. At the heart of this work is a special focus on IT professionals and developers.

At this week's Microsoft Tech•Ed 2006 conference, Microsoft spells out a set of four customer promises to IT pros and development teams — a set of long-term commitments designed to enable IT Pros and developers to build an infrastructure for the people-ready business by addressing their critical needs.