El Paso case study on gaining usage transparency with Open iT software usage metering tools

1. INTERSTATE PIPELINES │ EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION
Gaining Usage
Transparency with Open IT
Mike Persons
El Paso Corporation
Technical Platforms
May 19, 2010

2. Agenda
Context
The Dilemma
The Solution
Positive Results—Two Case Studies
Q&A
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3. Context
El Paso was working to contain our software
maintenance cost burden
In late 2008, we renewed our focus on costs as
a result of the global economic downturn
A majority of El Paso’s large E&P software
licenses were managed by FlexLM
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4. The Dilemma
Changes in our business model called for
scrutiny and a shift in software capacities
Limited server-based licensing solutions
incentivized “license hogging”
We had little metric-based visibility into
usage to combat unchecked growth in
license requests
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5. The Solution
El Paso invested in the OpenIT tool
– Both License Analyzer and License Optimizer modules
were purchased
– OpenIT serves as an additional analysis layer on top of
our FlexLM architecture
License Optimizer was installed on a number of our
engineering and geoscience desktops
We began using OpenIT reports to get a clear picture
of our usage statistics
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6. Positive Results—Case Study #1
Business users requested more licenses for a high-end
Geoscience Application
License checkout denials were becoming more frequent
We utilized OpenIT to scrutinize usage
– discovered that at least half of the licenses were often in “perpetual
checkout”
– It was determined that the number of licenses we currently owned
was sufficient for our usage
– Using OpenIT metrics, the user community gained insight into the
problem and changed behaviors
– The cost of OpenIT to El Paso was less than just one new license
of this product
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7. Positive Results—Case Study #2
We conducted an assessment of a large number of licenses
used by both our Geoscience and Engineering disciplines
Utilizing OpenIT tools to determine productive use, it was
discovered that we were over-licensed, and that a material
portion of users who had reserved licenses were only infrequent
users, if even that
As a result of this study, we were able to eliminate several
hundred thousand dollars of yearly software costs
The cost savings far outstripped our investment in the
OpenIT tool
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8. Q&A
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9. INTERSTATE PIPELINES │ EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION
Gaining Usage
Transparency with Open IT
Bill Roberts
El Paso Corporation
Director, Technical Platforms
May 19, 2010