ePP

Word of the day is 'ePP' - Employee purchase programme.

There are a couple of flavours of ePP - in all cases, ePP offer some form of employee benefit typically discounted software or hardware. Some companies (such as BA) bundle their enterprise software deals with their hardware deals. e.g. Vista Ultimate + Office 2007 + Dell D630 + HP Printer. Discount rates are typically between 10% and 20% but can be as much as 35% off the retail price.


ePP isn't just a giveaway ... it also benefits the enterprise

Many companies (e.g. major airlines, and banks) are using ePP to drive home adoption. Why? - Think about it...

• Every copy of Office 2007, or Vista at home is building user experience - and reducing the adoption leadtimes when the products become released in the corporation. This in turn reducing training requirements ... and improves overall enterprise productivity


• Using ePP to re-enforce 'good behaviours' - e.g. a number of companies are providing 'free' antiviral products to help staff familize themselves with concepts such as viral updates and personal firewalls. Every home device which is secured and employee mind which more familiar with secuirty concepts benefits the enterpise.
  
• ePP is also a great peace offering, how often does IT offering something of real personal value. It's a fringe benefit offering real monetary savings for employees.
  
• Every Network ready home PC = One less the enterprise needs to provide, it also represents a chance to connect more of the workforce outside of the office without need to incurr provisioning costs

So why no ePP?

The real sticking point in the past has been around recovering licence keys and tax implications for software or assest when employees leave the company.

The good news is the new schemes in place today don't infringe on the enterprise - and therefore have no tax, or asset recovering implications - in the same that rental car and hotel chains offer employee weekend rate discounts to employees of large corporate accounts. What is important however is to ensure that employees are aware - that these purchase are independent - i.e. they are outside of the standard corporate support frameowork.

So ePP + Remote Access = Good news for consumerisation.