Installing VSTO 2005 on a Server, Problem or not a Problem?

I've been listening to a superb presentation by Andrew Clinick about programming against Microsoft Word and Excel on the server with Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 (via Whidbey Beta 1). For those with a background in programming Word and Excel will know that server programming has always been unsupported by Microsoft and since Office is an application intended to be used by a user it's less that predictable on a server. Long story short: you need a very good reason and a good testing team if you want to automate Word and Excel on the server.

Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 (VSTO 2005 for short) includes an exciting new feature that in a nutshell, allows you to programmatically add, change and delete data in a Word and Excel document without installing Word and Excel on the server. This is useful in a number of document generation scenarios for the server. For example: Producing time consuming reports on the server, prepping a financial model for a customer on the server, and many other scenarios.

I do have one issue with an aspect of VSTO 2005 server programmability. To use the server programmability, you will need to run an installer (probably an MSI) on the server where the VSTO 2005 server programmability is to be used. The reason this concerns me is that developers in general have limited access to the server and installing software on the server can be a corporate red tape nightmare. I find that this requirement is contrary to the XCOPY ASP.NET deployment model where I develop my solution locally and I copy it to a remote directory where I do have access rights and it just works.

So is this a big deal or not? In my book it is. What do you think? No big deal? Big Deal? You don't care?