El Paso Corporation invested in OpenIT software to gain visibility into its software license usage and costs. OpenIT provided reports showing that El Paso had licenses sitting idle or in perpetual checkout. It also found that El Paso was over-licensed for some applications. Using OpenIT insights, El Paso was able to reduce unnecessary license requests, change user behaviors, and eliminate several hundred thousand dollars in annual software costs. The cost savings from OpenIT far outweighed the investment in the tool.

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