Part 2

In our last installment of this series, I touched on the paradigm of the BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) concept. In many cases, this concept can scare the IT departments of the world because it is giving some very important control back to the user because the user decides on the equipment and the software they will use.

In the old realm of IT:

The technicians and/or the respective departments owned the actual hardware and software. Hardware ownership can be a double-edged sword. Yes, the department has the control of standardization to help with supporting the machines, but the company is now responsible for the actual financial asset, , spare parts, book keeping, and "end-of-life-ing" the machines when they are old or fail. Some may see this as a small item and I may agree there, but there is a disadvantage to this scenario.

Support costs money:

Each time a user submits a trouble ticket for hardware issues, it has a fee attached to it. Every time a technician attends to hardware troubleshooting, it has a fee attached to it. Service agreements with hardware vendors has a big fee attached to it.

We (IT) are in the business of saving the company money, right? If IT is busy supporting the hardware, when will IT get cycles to innovate, optimize, and simplify other processes and procedures (a.k.a. save money)?

In the BYOC world:

Users OWN the laptop and the support agreements for the hardware and OS's themselves. When the user obtains the laptop, they would get the three year support agreement (like AppleCare). When a user has an issue, they call the vendor to troubleshoot the hardware and/or OS. If there is a problem, the user sends the laptop off to the manufacture for repair (or brings it to a local repair depot). If the customer has to send in or leave the laptop, IT can help in this case with a loaner pool during the down time. IT would only need a small loaner pool for this support. This saves IT cycles and IT money over the spectrum of a whole company because they are not being billed for service calls, contracts for support, or personnel hours. Saving support dollars and support time is a major part of the BYOC concept. Thus, making the bean counters happier

What IT would own:

IT would own the corporate software (MicroSoft Office, SAP, etc.). IT would own the security of those applications and any data that is being accessed and stored via those applications. With Citrix XenApp, all of the company software resides on the XenApp servers. This ensures the license compliance is in IT's control and the updates, patches, and administration is under IT's control. XenApp does not care about hardware vendor, OS (Macintosh, Windows, Linux), or connection. If the user wants software locally installed (not via XenApp), the user would purchase the software, install it, and support themselves without IT support. Some users may want this option, but the number is not large. The users usually like having the software support that IT provides.

It is all about having a choice for today's tech-savvy workers!

At Citrix, we leverage our partnerships and vendors to offer employee discounts on certain software, but this method is not imperative for a BYOC program to work since the user still has access to these applications via XenApp.

Of course there are a couple of other AWESOME Citrix solutions that can be implemented in the BYOC world and we will talk about those in future installments of this series.