The document discusses how an oil and gas company was able to significantly reduce the number of expensive Unix workstations from 357 down to 50 by using application metering software to identify which users actually needed their own workstations. Approaches like asking users, monitoring system activity, and checking software licenses were not effective in determining actual usage. Open iT software provided metrics on real application usage that allowed accurate identification of occasional users who could instead use terminal servers, cutting costs by around 70% while keeping users satisfied.

1. Identifying what we really needed!
A medium size oil and gas company had more than 350 high-end Unix workstations in
their upstream department. These workstations were billed for per computer
operated, by the company that provided the IT service to them, resulting in a
fairly high yearly cost. Management thought they easily could cut the number of
workstations down to around 100 computers, by requiring occasional users to use
applications through terminal servers, instead of having their own workstations.
Then the question posed was, who needed to use the workstations for productive
work and who did not? The manager of the upstream department, when questioning
users, found that everyone felt they needed their personal high-end computer. How
could we identify the users that really needed them?
Several approaches did not work, as seen below.
Approach: Fault:
Ask the user. Everyone said they needed it.
Meter system activity on the This shows all usage of the
workstation. workstations, even screensavers.
Check software license usage by looking No distinction between inactive and
at license check-out/check-ins. active sessions.
We had to find a better solution, which turned out to be metering applications in
real use on each computer.
“There were not a lot of good solutions out there, but we found one that worked
very well for us”, said Trond Ellefsen, Systems Architect at Hydro (now Statoil).
“Open iT provided exactly the right metrics I needed to be able to cut down the
number of workstations from 357 to 50, with much more drastic reductions than we
thought possible before we started.”
The cost reduction was around 70%, and users were happy with less heat and noise
in their offices. “The only problem,” said Kjell Randa, IT Manager, Hydro, “was
that some users complained they now needed an electric heater in the winter!”
Software used:
Open iT Base Professional
Open iT LicenseAnalyzer
Open iT SystemAnalyzer