The choose-your-own-computer concept is starting to gain adherents across the corporate world. Several financial services firms say they are considering similar programs. Computer maker Dell has a rough idea of how much it could save by letting most of its workforce of 78,900 choose which machines to use. Drug company AstraZeneca (AZN) estimates that it could cut tech costs by about $2 million a year by asking contractors and some full-timers to supply their own machines. Such programs would have been unthinkable just a few years ago because corporations lacked ways to easily manage and maintain a jumble of devices. As a result, the majority of companies in the U.S. ended up deploying fleets of desktop PCs running Windows. It also helped that PC makers such as Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) offered corporations deep discounts for volume purchases of machines, sometimes in an effort to sell other company products, such as servers or consulting services. Today, however, so-called virtualization software lets businesses deliver a consistent menu of software, company-approved applications, and tight security controls to every employee via the Internet, regardless of the kind of computer being used. Besides, PCs just aren't that expensive anymore, so companies such as Cisco now can focus on reducing maintenance costs, not deploying a standard army of machines. [...]