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For many years, Microsoft has used the phrase "eating our own dog food" -- shorthanded as "dogfooding" -- to describe the practice of rolling out new software to its employees first, theoretically letting them experience and report problems to ultimately improve the public release. Tony Scott, the executive in charge of Microsoft's internal technology systems, had no problem with the concept of dogfooding when the Walt Disney Co. veteran joined Microsoft last year as its CIO.

The name, however, he could do without.

"I decided very quickly that dogfooding just didn't sound very appealing. We started to change the name of it and calling it 'ice-creaming' now," Scott told the Society for Information Management at its national SIMposium convention in Seattle this afternoon.

Tony Scott

Scott said he is trying to sell the new name internally by telling employees that the idea is to dogfood the company's products to turn them into "ice cream that our customers want to consume."

That sounds better to Scott's brand-sensitive ears, and he said it's actually important to get employees thinking about the process in that way.

But he has many years of tradition working against him. As the story goes, the phrase comes from an old Alpo commercial in which actor Lorne Greene promised viewers that he gave his own dogs the food.

Scott is still giving it a shot. He has a bet with Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft's Server & Tools Business, and he encouraged the IT execs in the audience to help him win when they meet with Microsoft staffers by asking about "the ice-creaming efforts, and how they're going."

Yeah, right, and the next thing you know, people will start using "Bing" as a verb.

On a serious note, apart from the ice cream, Scott offered other interesting tidbits about Windows 7 and other aspects of running the company's internal IT systems. More to come in a follow-up post.

Follow-up: Windows 7 Beta bots, and other insights from Microsoft's IT chief