Microsoft Corp. today announced the beta release of Automated Deployment Services (ADS) for Windows® Server 2003, a powerful new server provisioning and administration tool that delivers key technology for the company's new Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). This initiative unifies hardware, software and service vendors around a software architecture, which enables customers to harness the power of industry-standard hardware and brings simplicity, automation and flexibility to IT operations. ADS helps customers reduce the complexity and high cost associated with managing today's modern datacenter by uniquely employing a subset of the System Definition Model (SDM) specifically for server provisioning (see related release). It enables customers to rapidly and automatically deploy hundreds of highly customized Microsoft® Windows Server system images across their environments in a matter of minutes, instead of days or weeks as is currently required.