Employees paid to buy office/home laptops

MIAMI — In a nod to how finicky people have become about the gadgets they use, software company Citrix Systems Inc. is rolling out a new program for its workers: BYOC - Bring your own computer.

Employees get a $2,100 stipend to buy a laptop and three-year service plan. In exchange for getting a computer with the specs they want - whether it’s a widescreen, a lightweight or ultrafast processing - the workers essentially take on the company’s technology purchasing and maintenance responsibilities. The 200 staffers who have signed up since the pilot program began this month say it’s a deal they’re happy to take.

Carolyn VanVurst, a Citrix information technology specialist, said she loved the idea of having a single laptop for both personal and business use, since she’s on the computer so much.

“It was easier for me to have my life on one device instead of separated,” she said.

It appears Citrix is the first large company to take such a leap, at least publicly. Steve Kleynhans, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said other technology companies have started similar pilot programs under the radar.

The idea presents technical challenges - such as making sure employees can access the programs they need for their jobs - as well as corporate policy questions, including how sensitive information is protected on the employees’ computers.

“There’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be done,” Mr. Kleynhans said.

For Citrix, the program is a way of promoting its “virtualization” technology, which among other things lets companies run software programs they need - like SAP for time sheets and Microsoft Exchange for e-mail - in a central data center. Employees access the applications by logging in remotely, but the programs and potentially confidential information in them are never downloaded to the workers’ own laptops.

Citrix’s chief information officer, Paul Martine, said the company’s leaders asked themselves: “Our technology does this - why aren’t we doing this?”

“I’m either crazy,” Mr. Martine added, “or this is going to be the trend of the future.”

Whether other companies follow the bring-your-own-computer route is more likely to depend on whether it saves them any money. Citrix said it generally had been spending $2,500 to $2,600 to buy and manage a PC for each employee - a figure that analysts said likely is similar at other companies - so it comes out ahead with the $2,100 stipend.

Pund-IT Inc. analyst Charles King called it a “very forward-looking strategy.”

“People tend to become very personally attached to their technology,” Mr. King said. “Having the freedom to buy the kind of computer you want would be seen as a perk, and a happy employee is usually a productive one.”

However, Sara Radicati, an analyst whose Radicati Group Inc. tracks business computing use, said she doesn’t see what problem the Citrix program fixes, and she’s unsure how useful it will be.

“We live in a complex world, so it is easier to manage and know where your data is and what is being done with company-sensitive information if you have a little more control,” Ms. Radicati said.

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