Should IT Shops Let Users Manage Their Own PCs?

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 2, 2008 @09:02AM from the hairy-question dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Is letting users manage their own PCs an IT time-saver or time bomb waiting to happen? 'In this Web 2.0 self-service approach, IT knights employees with the responsibility for their own PC's life cycle. That's right: Workers select, configure, manage, and ultimately support their own systems, choosing the hardware and software they need to best perform their jobs.'" Do any of you do something similar to this in your workplace? Anyone think this is a spectacularly bad idea?

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Run it for an imperfect world by Gription · 2008-04-02 09:19 · Score: 5, Informative

We have 7 techs supporting 2000+ computers in 800+ offices. We give guidance but we don't tell them they have to run them any any specific manner. The biggest advice is, "Boring is good".

License compliance is one detail were you can't offer any wiggle room. There are a number of good auditing software (including some free ones!) that will report on the installed software. That will keep you out of legal trouble.