Metrics Award for Gaining Usage Transparency paper

 

The case study (by Bill Roberts at El Paso Corp.) won the PNEC annual metrics award.

The paper details two case studies, and was presented at the 14th annual  Petroleum Network Education Conference where it was honored with the award.  The first case describes how El Paso used  Open iT®  research on actual software license usage patterns. They discovered at least half of the licenses were usually in “perpetual checkout”. Some software users preemptively checked out software licenses and kept them checked out,  with little or no system activity for days on end.

 

Based on their analysis, El Paso realized that although they had enough licenses to meet actual needs, they needed the user community  to stop the “perpetual checkout” behavior.Using Open iT® metrics in a report, they provided their user community with insights into the issue so they could change.

 

 

In the second case, as a part of their effort to reduce software maintenance costs, El Paso Corp. assessed a large number of licenses used by Geoscience and Engineering. By examining the license usage data provided by the Open iT® reporting module, they realized they were over-licensed in certain areas of their software suite. By looking at the“productive use” of various software items, they discovered a significant portion of underused licenses and features.

As a result of  their investigations El Paso Corp. was able to eliminate several hundred thousand dollars of yearly software costs, savings which far outstripped their investment in the Open iT® tool.

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