Devenuti is Microsoft's global chief information officer and vice president and considers Microsoft internally to have the same IT needs and challenges as any other large corporation. However, it is also different in that it is a pure Microsoft shop [as far as is possible] and like many other software vendors has to eat his own dog food when it comes to receiving new products. In fact, Devenuti's stated priority is for Microsoft as an organisation to be its first and best customer.
-For the last five major launches that I've been involved in, we've had agreement with the product group that they can't ship until we accept the product," he says. -Our involvement [for enterprise products] starts early in the development cycle, even before the release of beta code. We sit down with the product group and we agree on what level of IT rollout is necessary before the product releases. We ask them how they are you going to market it, what are the features they need to prove and then agree on very discrete and measurable goals and timelines.
-For example, we agreed to run Windows 2000 on 48,000 desktops in all mission critical business units. For Exchange, we agreed that 100 per cent of our employee base would run on Exchange 2000. Obviously, if the beta code isn't working we slow down deployment because we've got a business to run. Our focus is to make sure our products are proven and work in an enterprise of 44,000 people before we release them to our customers."
In fact, Devenuti says that one of the differentiators he uses in recruiting IT staff is the opportunity to do something they can't do anywhere else in the world, which is to run a US$23 billion company on beta software.
