1. Standard Operating Environment.
2. There are many reasons, but commonly enterprises will have Linux machines in service for many years (often whether they originally planned to or not!). An operation system falling out of support and not having security patches available is a big problem for most enterprises, and so Linux distributions should be chosen accordingly.
3. Yes, absolutely—the standards are there to serve as a guideline and to prevent things from getting chaotic, but they are not intended to be so rigid that they hamper progress or innovation.
4. Possible answers might include the following:
   • The speed at which new machines can be brought up for scaling purposes
   • Confidence in those machines that they will work the same as the current ones
   • The reliability of the machines brought into service
5. Possible answers might include the following:
   • High levels of confidence in the environment amongst all staff members
   • Supports automation of tasks
   • Consistency reduces the possibility of an application working in one environment and failing in another
6. As all the machines across the enterprise are the same (or at least broadly similar), staff can manage a large environment with a relatively small amount of knowledge, as all machines should be built the same way, to the same standards, and all applications should be deployed in the same way.
7. SOEs ensure the consistency of machine builds, which will include security hardening—the environment will also be built to known standards, which should have redundant services disabled (reducing the attack surface) and a well-understood patching strategy.