Microsoft CIO Tony Scott on stage yesterday at the SIMposium convention in downtown Seattle.

Remember that crush of demand for the Windows 7 Beta? Turns out there was a lot more going on behind-the-scenes than many people knew -- including a swarm of automated bots designed to capitalize on the seemingly scarce supply. It turned into a learning experience for the company, influencing Microsoft's approach to the final rollout of the operating system.

The story was one of several interesting anecdotes shared yesterday afternoon by Microsoft CIO Tony Scott, who oversees the Redmond company's internal IT systems, during a closing keynote presentation at the Society for Information Management's national SIMposium convention in downtown Seattle.

Scott told his fellow CIOs the Windows 7 Beta story to underscore the importance of understanding the entire product lifecycle from inception to development to delivery to the marketplace.

"Some people had gone out and created these bots to download the beta," he said. "We didn't anticipate that they were going to do that. We did a clever marketing thing that said, there's only limited quantities available. The bot guys figured that out and decided they were going to get in early and get part of the limited quantities."

He joked that it was one of those rare moments in marketing when a "while supplies last" message actually stirs people to action.

The incident prompted Scott and his team to work with people across the company to adjust. "We documented it, and then assessed our areas of vulnerability, and what we had to do, and I think you've now seen a very successful Win 7 launch," he said, without going into details on how Microsoft changed its tactics.

Other tidbits from his speech:

The company has consolidated its base of technology suppliers as part of its broader streamlining efforts in the midst of the economic downturn. "At Microsoft we'd had a history of doing a deal in IT with anybody who was buying an enterprise agreement, or doing a big deal," said Scott, who became CIO last year. "We'd buy a little something from them. Those days are over -- strategic value is increasingly important."

Microsoft IT has established its own version of "Think Week," an adaptation of Bill Gates' longstanding tradition of reading papers submitted by employees with new ideas and big thoughts about the company's future. "We have a whole internal process for evaluating those things, and many of the great ideas we go and implement," Scott said. "It's a fun process ... and you never know what people are going to think of."

Microsoft now has about 5,000 IT employees globally, about half of them outside the U.S., Scott told the audience.

"It is a globally diverse organization," Scott said. "In fact, the word offshoring kind of is a weird term to me, because when you're a global company, what's really offshore? It doesn't make sense, especially when half your organization is on some other shore someplace. ... I spend an awful lot of time out away from headquarters, talking to our staff, talking to our customers. I think it makes us a better global citizen. I think it makes us a better community, and we come up with better solutions when we have that perspective."