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El Paso’s Pipeline Group owns the largest natural gas pipeline system in North America, and supplies major markets as the nation’s leading interstate gas franchise. With over 5000 employees in Brazil and the United States, El Paso has established itself as a leading producer in two core areas of business, pipelines and exploration/production.

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Business Challenge

Software is the lifeblood of the exploration industry. It is common for E&P companies to have a large inventory of very expensive geoscience and engineering applications which are critically important aids in exploring for hydrocarbons, and bringing them to the surface.

In 2008 El Paso found spent an inordinate amount of time on figuring out how to reduce their growing software maintenance costs. The need for cost cuts was urgent due to the global economic downturn.

The majority of their high-end software was managed by FlexNet, which allowed them to see license checkout activity, but didn’t reveal how much productive time people actually used their software. Meanwhile the IT department had requests for more higher-end software licenses, due to frequent license checkout denials and full capacity.

And to contain this software maintenance cost burden, El Paso needs metric-based visibility into usage to combat “license hogging” and unchecked growth in license requests due to limited server-based licensing solutions.