Can Disney's Former CIO Eat Dog Food?

Microsoft announced Scott's appointment in a press release issued this afternoon. The former Disney CIO joins Microsoft in February and will report to Kevin Turner, who is chief operating officer.

Scott will oversee Microsoft's 4,000-person IT organization, which at one time was called OTG, or Operations Technology Group. I haven't recently checked to see whether or not the name has changed. Name changing is a big Microsoft past time. Microsoft organizations flow like rivers, frequently seeking new paths and identities.

The CIO's role is more than managing technology—and, at Microsoft, doing so in a fairly cost-effective manner. Scott deserves best wishes and a big good luck for the task he has taken on. Microsoft has a longstanding practice of using its own software or services, even before public release. Microsoft employees refer to this practice as "eating your own dog food," or "dog fooding."

That practice puts extra burden on the CIO and his information technology staff—and more responsibility. The CIO has some say as to whether or not a new product is ready for enterprise consumption.

But there is more. Microsoft is serving up some higher calorie dog food that's not necessarily easy to digest. Under the auspices of Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, Microsoft has been building out a massive services infrastructure—data centers on an enormous scale. Debra Chrapaty, who is corporate vice president for Global Foundation Services, is directly responsible for Microsoft's data centers. I recently spoke with someone at Microsoft who, in trying to explain the importance of Chrapaty's role, described her as the "hard hat girl."

In his new role, Scott will be immersed in dog fooding Microsoft's services platform as well as incorporating new products like SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 into Microsoft's IT organization.

Microsoft may be quite the change for the 25-year IT veteran. According to Netcaft, Disney.com runs on Linux and Apache. Microsoft.com is Windows Server 2008 and Internet Information Server 7.