End-user computing is the part of IT that looks after the devices employees work on: their laptops, desktops, phones and tablets, and the kiosks and scanners used in shops and warehouses. It also covers desktops that are streamed from a data centre instead of running on the employee's own machine. An end user is simply the person who uses the device.
Every company device goes through four stages. It is set up before the employee arrives. It is kept patched, which means the latest software fixes are installed. It is locked if it is lost. And it is wiped when the employee leaves. Most of this is done by unified endpoint management (UEM), which manages all of a company's devices from one console. The patching is done by patch management.
Here is a typical case at a clothing retail chain in Kolkata with 60 stores. A new store manager's laptop is sent straight from the maker to her home, still sealed. When she switches it on and signs in, it registers itself as a company device and installs the company's applications by itself. The billing tablets in the stores are locked to a single application, so staff cannot use them for anything else. When a delivery supervisor loses his phone in a taxi, the IT team wipes it the same afternoon.
This zone holds two more products. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) runs the employee's desktop on a server in a data centre or the cloud, and streams it to any screen. So a lost laptop loses no data. Call centres, banks and hospitals use it widely. Digital employee experience (DEX) measures how well each laptop performs for its user: how long it takes to start, which applications crash and where the Wi-Fi fails. IT can then fix a problem before the employee raises a ticket.
Both UEM and DEX depend on a small program installed on every device, called an endpoint agent. This is also where IT and security overlap most. Managing a device and securing it are now often done by the same product, next to endpoint detection and response (EDR) software. The devices themselves come from laptop and desktop makers.