Today marks the beginning of Tech•Ed 2007, Microsoft’s premier annual conference for IT professionals and developers. During the opening keynote, Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Server and Tools Business, detailed Microsoft’s vision for “Dynamic IT” and discussed the company’s holistic approach to helping customers lower costs and increase the strategic value of IT within their organizations. As part of this, he explored how business applications are evolving to blend the best of the Web and consumer world – such as rich, personalized experiences available across multiple devices and platforms – with the characteristics of more traditional corporate applications.

Muglia emphasized the need for infrastructure that allows organizations to accommodate this trend and highlighted how Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7), Microsoft’s platform for developing and hosting Web applications and services, has now been added to the Server Core installation option of Microsoft Windows Server 2008. Since this decision was based on extensive feedback from customers and partners, PressPass spoke with Microsoft's Bill Laing, general manager, Windows Server Division, to find out why the industry is so eager to see IIS7 added to the Server Core installation and to learn more about what IIS7 means to the IT community in general.