Sichtbarkeit ist wichtig: Wie Unternehmen über 30 % bei Engineering-Software sparen

[0:00] Sagi: To get you the report that you need, no matter the complexity. So let’s get going. The main issue that we have seen is that organizations are unable to effectively manage their engineering application licenses. Now this is usually because they don’t have any license usage information or analytics that help them with their decisions. So it doesn’t really matter if you have concurrent licenses, named licenses, cloud-based subscription, or token-based licenses, Open iT monitors all of them and consolidates them under one.

[0:50] So Open iT can also monitor all types of licenses. So if it’s a regional agreement, a global agreement, or even just a standalone application, Open iT helps you monitor your license environment regardless of the model it uses. So what you’re basically looking for probably is something to tell you, you have this amount of licenses, this is the amount of usage of those licenses, and this is where you can go in order to optimize this license usage. So Open iT does just that for all the different types of licenses.

[1:35] All the different types of engineering applications, so coming from Autodesk, MathWorks, Cadence, and many more, all are monitored and optimized under a single group. So Open iT tracks your organization’s engineering applications, consolidates the data, and offers statistical analysis under a single flexible reporting interface. So this can be shown in our interface, in Power BI, Tableau, or any other querying tool or business intelligence tool that you prefer, to get flexibility over your data. But more on that later.

[2:24] So what can Open iT offer in its embedded platform? Well, once you input the link into your browser you’ll be able to get real-time usage, historical reporting capabilities, and alerts which help you administer your licensing environment. You’ll be able to see what’s going on right now in your system so you can react to any day-to-day issues. So you’ll know which applications you have, who uses them, how many licenses they took, how long they’re actually using it, where they’re using it from, and all the information that you’re looking for. You can also understand if that was a borrowed license, a reserved license, what happened with it.

[3:19] So Open iT offers you statistical insights into your license usage, such as you see here. This is a heat map representing the max usage per each hour of each day. So it gives us a bird’s-eye view over the data, we’re able to see exactly what’s going on at each point in time at one glance. So if it’s a local license server we might want to see something like this, usage concentrated around the working days and working hours. Well if it’s a global one we might want to see it all spread out. But it gives you a good indication of how the license is actually being used.

[4:07] Now even if there’s no usage, meaning users got denied from using a license, well Open iT can monitor that as well. So you’ll be able to understand how bad the situation was. Did you have 100 denials or did you have 10? Did you have 20 people getting denied or just two? So Open iT can indicate that and report that in any way or form you choose.

[4:50] So besides just historical reporting, Open iT can offer you the ability to generate a license efficiency report. This helps you better understand how many licenses you actually need. So let’s take this case, I’ve got 154 licenses but how many licenses do I actually need? Well let’s take a look at this graph which shows us the amount of time spent on each level. So getting two people to work at the same time, well that’s easy, so it’s going to be most of the time. But getting 150 people working together, that’s harder, that happens less often. Now if we take a look at this graph we see that everything above, like 100, is pretty much negligible, not a lot of time spent using all those licenses. So if you want to reach an efficiency of let’s say 99%, well Open iT’s system tells you, hey you don’t need 150 licenses, you just need about a hundred. So what does this mean to the end user? 99% efficiency, that means when they try to get a license they’re going to get it 99% of the times, they’re going to get the license they need right away. This helps us reduce license spending. And what we can see from this report and ones like it is that you can save anywhere from 30% upwards on your licensing costs.

[6:35] But let’s take a look at the data analysis capabilities of Open iT and what can be integrated with it. So besides the interface which you have seen before, you can also get the data onto Excel and aggregate and transform your license usage data however you’d like. You can get it onto a Power BI dashboard or any other BI tool like Tableau, Spotfire, Qlik Sense, etc.

[7:16] Okay but let’s take a customer case study as an example for this. Now this was a global company and their main challenge was that these engineering applications were partially responsible for a huge software expense. So they had over a thousand users but had no control or visibility on how many licenses were actually being used and by whom. So the solution was of course LicenseAnalyzer™ level one. So what they found out right away is that they can save some money on licensing. They found a few servers with zero usage, meaning nobody used them, so they could be decommissioned right off the bat. You can save money on maintenance and licensing costs. Now if you put the dollar amount on it based on the cost of each application’s license, you’ll be able to see almost half a million dollars saved in this case.

[8:26] Now once you know what you have and how well you’re actually using that, you’ll be able to tell how much money you can save. Now this is one thing that Open iT does best, is allow you to get the dollar amount into the system. So it will know the cost of each license and will be able to say not only how much did you pay for it but how much potential savings you might have.

[9:03] So what Open iT aims to do is, first of all, monitor license usage. Once it’s monitored, report on it. And that’s basically what you’ve seen up until now, you’ve got the different reports such as the heat map, the efficiency, everything that you’ve seen. But Open iT does something above that, something beyond that. So the second level of Open iT, you can also get visibility on active versus inactive usage, meaning you can get reported on users who checked out a license but are not actually using it. So you might have got a license, started using it, maybe went to a meeting, maybe went home, but that license is now sitting on their workstation and no one else can use it. So that’s a shame. What Open iT can do is tell you which user is barely using the application for their session duration. You’ll be able to know if they’re actually using the application or not.

[10:17] Now this third level allows you to act upon it and it helps you release idling licenses. So let’s take an example of an end user who checked out a license but is not actually using the application. Maybe they went to a meeting, maybe they’re just doing something else, or maybe they just opened up the app to have a license for it for the duration of the day. So this license is now taken and cannot be checked out by anyone else, making the license effectively stuck on their workstation. So with level two you can see that this is happening, but with level three you can actually act upon it and suspend this application, get the license back into the pool, and basically say, look, if we see that you’re idling for too long, well we need that license, we need that shared license for other people to use, so it’s retracted back into the pool automatically.

[11:28] But let’s take a closer look at level two and understand what it has to offer and how it does that. So Open iT can monitor CPU activity, mouse activity, keyboard activity, and reading and writing to the disk, meaning that it will be able to know if the user is actively using the application or if the application is idling. You’ll of course be able to get reported on this, the inactive versus active times per application, per user, whatever you choose, whichever aggregation you want to show it by.

[12:08] Now let’s say that someone clicked the mouse, maybe typed a few things on the keyboard, but then left the application to run some simulation or some calculation. Well the system will know that the CPU is taken, memory is taken, everything is being used by this application. So it’s doing something, it’s running something. Open iT will know not to mark it as idle because it’s working. So even if it’s a simulation, Open iT will discern and understand when to start counting the idle time. So in this case it will start counting only once everything flatlines or goes to its idle state threshold.

[13:07] Now idle and active times are of course logged and reported based on any aggregation that you desire.

[13:17] So let’s take a look at level three. Level one we said was just monitoring and reporting. Level two was understanding the behavior of the users, are they actually using the licenses that they checked out? And level three is acting upon it, basically getting the license back into the pool in an automated fashion, also called automated license harvesting. So let’s take a scenario. Let’s say that we have an end user, they’re currently using the application, all good. But then they turn idle after a short while. They’ll get a message saying please respond or your application will be suspended. If they don’t respond in a timely manner, their application is suspended, meaning that the license is now back in the license server, back into the pool, available for others to use. So this can of course give you full visibility over your users and how they’re behaving, and also correct wrong behavior, correct idling. You can get reported on suspensions, on the active and inactive times, how many were suspended, for how long, and so on. You can get everything in one place, doesn’t matter which license manager, doesn’t matter which application.

[15:01] So what are we looking for? Let’s say that we have level one installed on your system. Well then you can see how many licenses you have and how many licenses are actually being used. Then we start up level two and you’ll be able to see the true usage, meaning what would be the usage if no one was idling. Then we start up level three and we see that the usage, because of all the automated harvesting, the usage will go down to roughly match the true active usage, allowing you to of course reduce the amount of licenses that you have.

[15:54] So Open iT supports all these different license managers. You can see here all the market leaders, for example FlexLM, DSLS, RLM, RMS, all of them are consolidated under one interface.

[16:19] Now our mission is basically to help companies reduce cost and complexity of managing IT assets by metering and optimizing license usage.

[16:36] So how do you get started? First of all we set up a pilot, a POC. Then once we get the order we install, configure, and train you on Open iT so we can generate any report or dashboard that you require. The next step is analysis. So any aggregation, data type, or external integration that you need will be there for you. And lastly we’ll help you optimize your licensing environment, rebalancing portfolios, calculating true ups, negotiating with vendors, whatever you need.

[17:24] So once you sign up with Open iT you get the full experience. First of all you’ll get the project team who will be there to train you on Open iT, to generate any reports you might require, and even offer consulting services on solutions required for your licensing environment. So if you have any issues or questions you’ll be able to be supported by our support and sales team. They’ll be on your side ready to help, 24 hours a day, five days a week. And of course you can get Open iT as a professional service as well, where we do all the heavy lifting. And that’s it for now.

[18:12] Thank you very much for your time and attention. But let’s hear it from you, do you have any questions for me on Open iT and the presentation you have seen? Let’s turn it over to you.

[18:28] Mae: Thank you Sagi for that very insightful presentation. I’m sure that many of our audience have questions to ask our presenter. So we are now ready for the Q&A. We have received several questions here through asktheexperts@openit.com from our audience. First question is, how can Open iT help our company save more than 30% of our licensing costs?

[18:58] Sagi: All right, so Open iT can help you save more than 30% using a few things. First of all, visibility. As we’ve seen, once you know what you have and how well you’re using it, well you know where you can cut costs. Besides that, you’ll be able to find parts which are not being used in your system, or licenses which are not used the whole duration, allowing you to harvest idling licenses and basically lower the amount of licenses that you have.

[19:33] Mae: Thank you. Yes we have another one here. It says, how can Open iT automate our licensing environment?

[19:47] Sagi: All right, so your licensing environment usually doesn’t tell you anything. If a license server goes down you usually don’t know about it. Open iT can help you set up different criteria so if a license server goes down, if a license is about to expire, if someone is using it for too long, well you can get notified on that infraction and you can react quickly. Not only you as the admin can get notified but the end users themselves can also be notified. So let’s say someone pulled three licenses at the same time instead of one. The administrator has an alert but that user can also get an email saying hey, don’t get so many licenses. Thus your system gets automated because you don’t have to work for it, it works for you. It basically notifies you if there are any misalignments or any criteria that you set that were met.

[21:04] Mae: Yes, thank you. And we have also a question here from Irfan. How is the screen idle time and actual usage runtime differentiated?

[21:26] Sagi: So there is first of all the runtime, meaning someone checked out a license and you want to know the elapsed time of their session. Well this one we can get from the license manager because Open iT reads the logs, reads the license file, reads the lmstat, all the license output, in order to generate who checked out a license, from where, when, and so on. Now on the workstations themselves we’ll have a component, the Open iT client as well, which tracks the CPU usage, memory usage, keyboard and mouse clicks, and can discern if that user is currently idling with that application or not. So not necessarily that user, it can also be the application itself running some simulation, taking up CPU, taking up resources, and then the Open iT system knows that it’s being used versus idle. All this information is sent back to the core component. So the core component gets data from the license servers, gets data from the workstation, gets data from everywhere, and joins it in order to present it in a cohesive manner. So you’ll be able to discern the inactive versus active versus the entire session time.

[23:06] Mae: Thank you Sagi. And we have one more question, what makes Open iT unique in the field?

[23:13] Sagi: Oh, so a few things. First of all, Open iT can help you understand which license model you need. So is it better to have a local license? Maybe it’s better to have a global license? Or maybe it’s just better to have user-based licenses? Maybe a mix of all three is the best. Which one is optimum for your organization? Now this is something that Open iT can tell you, it can tell you that you can run different simulations and understand, oh, I would be better with 50 named users and two local licenses and one global license, for example. Because every organization has a different usage pattern, one will have short sessions, one will have long sessions, and one will have a mix of the two. So based on that, Open iT can tell you which model will be the best. Not only that, not only telling you which one is actually the best option for you or the optimum configuration for you, Open iT can also help you put the dollar amount on it, as you’ve seen. Now this distinguishes Open iT from its competitors because you can get your entitlements, your contracts, everything into the system and have the data merged and presented on reports and anything that you need, which makes Open iT really stand out in that regard. So I would say there are a lot of things, but I would say two things. First of all, we can help you understand which model of license is best for you and how to count it. And we can also help you understand your cost value of the licenses. For example, you want to do chargeback, well you’ll be able to know exactly how much to invoice every department.

[25:23] Mae: Thank you, I believe those are all the questions. Thank you so much for all the questions you sent. And that wraps up our webinar. Thank you Sagi, and to all our attendees, if you have any questions for our presenter please don’t hesitate to send Sagi an email at s.reuven@openit.com. Please also visit our website at openit.com to schedule a demo and learn more about our solutions. Also let me grab this opportunity to invite you to listen to our podcast, Talk IT at SAM, for engineering, on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. And if you have any requests, suggestions, or comments please write to us at podcast@openit.com. We are glad to assist you on your software optimization journey. Always be updated, follow us on social media. Once again this is Mae, your host for today. Thank you and stay safe.

[26:27] Sagi: All right, thank you very much everyone, have a wonderful day. Thank you.