The company is one of the largest integrated energy companies in the world. With research and production sites established in more than 40 countries, it employs approximately 40,000 people

For IT Asset Managers in this technology-reliant company of roughly 1,700 high-end software users, supplying equipment needs, keeping costs down and assessing the value of each IT investment were ongoing challenges. It became increasingly important for business managers to see where and how IT resources contributed to the company’s bottom line. Additionally, a company merger made it imperative to eliminate duplicated software, renegotiate vendor contracts and provide management with an accurate reading of how and where costly IT investments were being used to further overall business goals.

Getting usage reports for management had always been difficult since the process involved multiple steps by several individuals. It included the painstaking job of scripting and manually transferring data to Excel spreadsheets and a reliance on technical personnel who had to set aside essential tasks in order to help.

“I was getting very tired of asking key technical personnel to help me manually put together Excel spreadsheets of software usage information,” explained the company’s Global Application Portfolio Manager. “I knew this information was critical to the company, but I also knew that important operational work had to be postponed as a result.”

Also, there had been no effective way to integrate business data with usage data for company-wide charge-back. Management needed to see how IT expenses were used by each user at each location to make proper budget allocations, as well as support and guide critical business decisions. The same data was needed to properly negotiate the company’s long-term objectives with software vendors.

After reviewing several data-collecting and reporting software packages, and considering the development of an in-house solution, Open iT LicenseAnalyzer was chosen for its ease-of-use, Web-based reports and robust flexibility to accommodate company-specified functions. It includes software inventory, a real-time monitor and a usage-reporting tool that analyzes software and license utilization over specified time periods.

The initial installation, report format set-up and training, together with the integration of user data from the Active Directory, took less than two weeks. After this, software was installed locally on the nine regional sites in North America, Asia, Middle East and Europe, and the company appointed managers to be in charge of each site. Training sessions were held as online meetings, and each manager could readily see his or her own usage statistics for different applications and features and compare this to the overall enterprise picture.

One of the key license reports is a table showing applications used, feature names, name of user, the business units they belong to, the site locations, the SAP cost centers, job titles, the total active time and the maximum number of licenses in use. This information can be regrouped at any time to target key areas of focus. Senior management could now access the reports directly, get the information they needed, and analyze company needs for future investments.

With Open iT LicenseAnalyzer, Site Managers, IT Asset Managers, and Senior Business Managers all have access to software usage data for nine sites, worldwide. They can easily see the cost or profit center needs without asking for help from technical staff. License agreements can be renegotiated with vendors using real data. Unnecessary expenses of unused licenses can be readily recognized and eliminated, and IT resources can be consolidated and optimized.

“With Open iT Software in house, I can create all the reports I need,” explains the Global Application Portfolio Manager, “and even better, I know that all the other managers and analysts of software assets in our company on a regional level can do the same.”

One of the company’s Business Solutions Analysts stressed that “one of the most important features of our Open iT Software implementation was the addition of our Active Directory information to all of our reports. With these reports, we can get a very clear idea of an individual user’s application needs. We also use this information to provide usage statistics to management for accurate maintenance charge-back. Open iT Software has given us the ability to better understand the usage trends and value of our software.”

The company recovered its initial product expense almost immediately by modifying a license agreement that was up for renewal shortly after installing Open iT Software. “To go for a packaged solution saved us both time and money and was a great success,” enthuses the Director of Geoscience Support. “In the first six months we have seen a ten-fold return on our investment by simply analyzing license check-outs and dropping unused licenses. Our next analysis will focus on license usage patterns such as a ‘follow the sun’ analysis, to determine optimal licensing scenarios for our application portfolio including site licensing, global licensing, leasing, or simply the transfer of licenses. In the future, we will use the employee job title from the Active Directory data combined with application usage reports to provide our Exploration Management the data they can use for skills management assessment and career development decisions.”