How can you tell if Microsoft is really serious about a technology? If it begins using it internally. Barry Briggs, the CTO of Microsoft IT, told me that many product groups at the company won"t ship new applications to the market until the full version of their products have been thoroughly dogfooded--the unappealing term that tech companies use to mean that they use the product internally as part of the testing process.
Briggs fell short of saying that dogfooding products is sticking in his craw, but did admit that it represents a burden in terms of hardware, manpower and time. "We try to be Microsoft"s first and best customer," he said. The upside, he said, is that his department is trying to live the Dynamic IT slogan that Microsoft is touting to its customers. "We"re continuously being able to be more agile, flexible, responsive to the needs of our business partners," he told me.