Welcome to the world's largest beta program. Microsoft is the ultimate "dogfood" company, testing its products on its own network, a global information system encompassing approximately 300,000 devices, 104,000 e-mail accounts and 89,000 end users spread out over 83 countries.

Responsibility for the smooth running of this enterprise falls on the shoulders of Microsoft IT, which bills itself as "Microsoft's first and best customer." This has advantages and disadvantages; the advantage is that Microsoft products are tried out in a huge environment before they're released to the public. The disadvantage, at least from the point of view of Microsoft IT, is that many of the products it relies on for day-to-day operations are, by definition, unfinished and still buggy -- yes, even buggier than the 1.0 version products many companies instinctively avoid.