Microsoft has a comprehensive tradition of eating its own dog food, or dogfooding. This does by no means produce negative connotations. It just means that the Redmond Company is deploying the products it makes across its infrastructure. And Microsoft's dogfooding is not limited to Windows Vista. Office and Exchange are also on Microsoft's dogfooding menu.

Moreover, James Senior, Vista Technical Specialist reveals that Microsoft begins product deployment even in early beta stages: "Microsoft employees do so much dogfooding that many of the bugs are fixed before our customers get to test the product itself. We make a great team when combined with our large number of public beta testers and together ensure that the software is as reliable and stable as possible. I know that I submitted quite a few bugs and I was always pleased with how responsive and thorough the developers were when they contacted me about my issues. We recently said thank you to our public beta testers by giving them a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition for all the hard work they put in - we really do appreciate it!"

In this context, according to statistics provided by the Redmond Company, the Microsoft Internal Beta Use Through RC1 indicates that there were over 50,000 copies of Office 2007 and in excess of 40,000 copies of Windows Vista deployed.

Senior even presented Microsoft reasons for dogfooding:

- Simulate the customer's business user experience
- Ensure product readiness
- Gain enterprise experience
- Conduct compatibility testing for 3rd party and LOB applications
- Validate product value
- Develop and test training materials
- Prepare partners and Microsoft Support Customer Care
- Develop and document best practices for customer use: IT Showcase and Everyday Productivity - - - - Education (EPE) Guides