edit: Some of the answers below have been very helpful and I think will get me some way to where I would like to be. In particular, the use of answer files for scriptable installs will help to create consistent installations and some of the WMI tools will be very useful for documentation (LANsweeper, SYDisproject etc.)
Spat 6.0.9 Final Version Tool For Sysprep Installation
Beyond the initial installation of the products, knowledge about where each product stores its configuration will take you a long way toward consistency. Scripting to manipulate the filesystem and registry isn't a whole lot different on Windows than manipulating configuration files on a *nix machine. Where registry manipulation isn't appropriate there are typically command-line utilities to perform most other configuration tasks (netsh, the "net" command, resource kit tools, etc). I'd be fairly certain that most configuration tasks you're going to run up against have already been automated and made scriptable by somebody if you look hard enough.
 721597776b