Microsoft has decided to make things a lot easier for data center operators. Its about time. We welcome any improvements that can be made in these areas and the sooner the better. Most large companies currently build and maintain their build process with in house apps and personnel. Many companies would benefit from having a standardized program to accomplish these tasks. A couple other promises such as lower disk space and being able to edit the contents of an "image" without rebuilding the image file is also promising.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/ads.mspx