Better Decisions Through Software Visibility

[00:04] Emmanuel Elicanal: Good afternoon again. My name is Emmanuel Elicanal from Chiyoda Philippines. You may call me Noel for short. I’m currently serving as one of the managers for digital infrastructure and initiatives, currently handling project IT support and, at the same time, digital transformation.

[00:39] Emmanuel Elicanal: So my topic is about better decisions through software visibility, because as mentioned by Sir Robert, we’re handling many projects — particularly EPC — and not just small projects but really large projects. And when we talk about large projects, it also talks about huge man-hours.

[01:00] Emmanuel Elicanal: And when we talk about man-hours, especially in engineering as a design company, we are using many types of software, and we came to a point when Sir Robert became our center manager for IT — at that time we were having challenges, especially when new projects come. So normally we just assume our available licenses, so it’s easy for us to just charge the client for the number of licenses we’re using and just purchase what we need. But one of the challenges in doing that is that we are not providing an optimized cost to our client, and at the same time we see the failure to really have proper monitoring of the licenses we are really using.

[02:06] Emmanuel Elicanal: So, to be able to journey with this presentation with me, I’m just going to show two things this afternoon: first, our journey from manual to automatic software metering, and second, our current Open iT utilization — not everything, but just the overview.

[02:22] Emmanuel Elicanal: As mentioned, we have these challenges, which arose probably for more than a year, but we tried to find a way to solve them way back in 2012. And during that time we had these top three questions. Number one: how many licenses do we really have in our inventory? Because when a new project comes, normally, once a particular engineering department or discipline needs a particular software — like, for example, AutoCAD — normally, although we are maintaining a control sheet or spreadsheet, we are aware of probably the number of licenses we purchased, but these spreadsheets are inaccurate. So these are prone to human error, and normally we are unsure if the data reflected in those spreadsheets is really correct or accurate. So we have this question: is the data here really the number of licenses we have in our inventory? And the second question is: how many licenses are really in use, and how many available licenses can we provide, so that we can mitigate or avoid purchasing a new one? So these are the questions we had.

[03:53] Emmanuel Elicanal: So together with these questions, these are also the common problems we had during that time. Once we were probably able to identify the number of licenses in our inventory, we weren’t sure if those licenses were still enough to support our operations, and at the same time we were also unsure if the requests being given to us for additional licenses — it was hard for us to validate those requests, and if we could validate what we need, it was to justify or show evidence for the purchase of additional licenses. So normally during that time we were just doing guesswork — we really didn’t have proper monitoring, although we were tracking it to a certain spreadsheet.

[05:03] Emmanuel Elicanal: So just to show you what we were doing: normally those software licenses were controlled by each department. Although as IT it is one of our responsibilities to manage our IT asset, the owners and users of that software are the engineering disciplines. So normally, when a new project comes, we send them a monthly spreadsheet wherein they need to fill it up manually — normally through email — and then they will, for example, state how many AutoCAD they need, how many SmartPlant tools they need, or AVEVA, if you’re familiar with that software. So normally we’re confirming those licenses based on the forecast made by each department manually, so there’s no really proper monitoring. So normally those departments are hogging many licenses — of course they want to make sure that, for example, a new project comes, they have sufficient license — so normally what they are reflecting sometimes is not really the correct data.

[06:19] Emmanuel Elicanal: So what we do — normally these software licenses also have their own license managers. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Intergraph products, like, for example, SmartPlant, Smart 3D, or SmartPlant P&ID — so these tools have their own license managers, and these license managers also provide tools wherein we can monitor the usage of those licenses. But those reports are not enough for us to determine what departments are using those licenses. We can identify the user, but it will also take us time to identify who that user is and what department he or she comes from. So normally we can check — like, for example, this one is SELECTserver by Bentley, way back probably 15 years ago — so they have this kind of report, but it will just reflect the computer name and the user, but not the department or other details.

[07:50] Emmanuel Elicanal: So normally it takes us approximately an hour, if we’re lucky, or maybe two hours, to manually count that usage — and that time it was just for 90 licenses.

[08:00] Emmanuel Elicanal: So we thought of an initiative, a solution, and how we could be able to overcome this. And what we did was invite and look for several software vendors that could address our inquiries, our concerns. So Open iT was one of the three software metering systems that were tested through POC. As mentioned earlier by Sir June, the first step, if you’re looking to acquire Open iT, is to conduct a POC. And during that time we had tested Open iT through proof of concept from January to May 2012 — it was almost 4 months of POC. So Open iT was just one; we also entertained several other software metering products. But Open iT was the lucky one we got.

[08:57] Emmanuel Elicanal: Just to tell you how we came to encounter Open iT — of course, none other than Google. So what we did, we just typed in “software asset management,” so that’s the keyword we used, and one of the results we had was Open iT. Actually we were surprised at that time — we were thinking that Open iT was based in Manila, but we were surprised they were based south of the Philippines, 3 hours from Manila.

[09:39] Emmanuel Elicanal: And Open iT was selected after that POC, and the criteria we had which made us select Open iT is, first, the reports — because Open iT can easily generate the required reports without too much customization; that’s one of the good things about Open iT’s reporting. And then usage analysis — because not only the reports, the tool also can perform in-depth usage analysis. That’s what Sir June also mentioned earlier — it can include the analysis of the usage of a particular software depending on the CPU, the I/O, the keyboard and mouse activities.

[10:33] Emmanuel Elicanal: And, you know, Open iT — we implemented Open iT in September 2012. So we had started the POC from January up to May, and the decision was made in September 2012. And when we did that, Open iT also conducted a knowledge-transfer training, which was done a month after that, in October — so that’s the good thing about Open iT.

[11:05] Emmanuel Elicanal: And one of the first steps — I don’t know if you’re practicing the use of a software metering tool — one of the best steps right after you implement a software metering system is you need to implement a policy. You need to standardize how you want to meter your software, because way back in 2012, when we implemented that, we standardized how we were going to use Open iT, and this summarizes the responsibilities, the procedures, etc., wherein at that time we started from generating monthly reports which show license usage for selected critical software only — so we started from the most common tools that are critical, that are currently being used by the project at that time.

[12:05] Emmanuel Elicanal: So just to show you our initial reports way back 15 years ago: as you can see here, this is our AutoCAD monthly usage report, which we are doing monthly, of course. So here you can see our maximum available license, which is 155. But the disciplines — the entire engineering disciplines — they just forecasted 152. So probably they were thinking there were still three available, but through Open iT we were able to measure the actual max-used license, meaning the peak usage, which is just 120 — meaning we have 35 available licenses that are still unused during that time. So this is also one way how Open iT can also provide you insight into your software usage.

[13:10] Emmanuel Elicanal: And this second report — this is our AutoCAD monthly usage report, which shows department-wise usage. So here you can see the several disciplines we have: civil, electrical, instrumentation, mechanical, piping, piping technology, process, project IT, and project engineering. So here you can see that this is for the month of December 2013. You can see, based on our analysis, that piping, mechanical, piping technology, project IT, and instrumentation have exceeded their forecasted maximum available license. So here you can see also a trend which can also provide you insight into how each department is using its licenses.

[14:06] Emmanuel Elicanal: The good thing also is that it enables us to have this annual usage report, which shows the trend — the available licenses, the peak usage, and the forecast, monthly. So the blue line shows the available license for the entire year, the green line is the forecast, and the red line at the bottom is the peak usage. So you can see here the big gap from the available license to the actual peak usage monthly. So this is how Open iT provides us insights.

[14:49] Emmanuel Elicanal: So one of the actual experiences we had way back in 2013 — this is just one of the experiences we had. We had a lot of experiences on how Open iT helped us optimize our cost, and this is just one.

[14:56] Emmanuel Elicanal: So way back in November 2013, there was a CAD license usage forecast to exceed the available license by two — this is just two, just to give you an example, but this is an actual experience. So there was probably a counter-measure that we could take. Option one: we could purchase that license immediately. But we had now option two, because of Open iT — we could evaluate a monthly CAD license trend usage. So definitely CPh decided to take option two, which helped us result in the avoidance of an unnecessary purchase. So it helped us not just cut cost but also helped us really optimize our available license to make it available for that particular project. So the initial forecast of CAD license for November 2013, at that time, was 157, but based on the actual usage gathered by Open iT, we saw that the analysis showed only 123 licenses — meaning we had a lot of license that could cover those two licenses requested by the particular discipline.

[16:53] Emmanuel Elicanal: So why did we choose — why do we choose Open iT? First, because of the easy access to license data at any given time. Second, they provide us a real-time report and a reliable report at the same time — current, monthly, and annual — and at the same time it provides an in-depth usage trend analysis, and it helps us maximize our available licenses without unnecessary spending. And then lastly, Open iT is a simple tool but really not a simple one — it provides us highly accurate software license management and optimization.

[17:45] Emmanuel Elicanal: So I would just like to show you some of our current Open iT utilization. It’s good that Sir June showed us the traditional way of reports that Open iT is producing — so we’re still doing that. However, the good thing about Open iT, aside from the reports it provides through that traditional way, is that Open iT can also now integrate with Power BI.

[18:01] Emmanuel Elicanal: So before we were happy already with SSRS, the SQL reporting, but right now we can create visual dashboards for monitoring our software utilization and it provides license usage trends.

[18:36] Emmanuel Elicanal: So I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Bluebeam, but this is one of the tools wherein we created a dashboard. So in this dashboard you can see the usage of each discipline — piping, civil, electrical — you can just click on that, and once you click you can see their active and inactive usage per hour, and then it provides a graph based on the elapsed time by each discipline, and then you can also select the duration and it will provide you the report you need.

[19:21] Emmanuel Elicanal: So this is for Bluebeam. We also did the same for AutoCAD — this one is not really AutoCAD only, it also includes other Autodesk software, like Civil 3D, Forma, Navisworks, and Revit. So this is also providing a discipline-wise report, and at the same time shows the active and inactive usages. So aside from this, this one is dedicated for AutoCAD — this is one of the first dashboards we created. So this is also a discipline-wise report wherein, similar to the previous one, you can select particular dates and then it will provide you the active and inactive usage as well. It also provides the specific users and departments, and what particular package they are using.

[20:31] Emmanuel Elicanal: So we also did the same with Bentley. So we’re trying to create now dashboards for almost — our goal is to create a dashboard for all the engineering software we are using. So right now, through the help of Open iT, we were able to create this dashboard by connecting to Bentley Cloud through SQL as well. So we were able to gather all the applications from our portfolio and then be able to consolidate all this data, indicating the peak usage analysis, our available licenses, and our usage — at the same time the department-wise report, and at the same time specific user report.

[21:22] Emmanuel Elicanal: We also did the same for our Hexagon products, formerly Intergraph. So we allow the user to select particular tools from Hexagon — CAESAR II, PV Elite, Smart 3D, SmartPlant Spoolgen, SmartSketch — so similarly it shows the report, active and inactive, at the same time available licenses and the max usage analysis.

[21:54] Emmanuel Elicanal: So, actually, that’s all for us — just to provide you an overview of how we are using Open iT. But I would just like to encourage everyone, if you’re into software metering — especially software intelligence, as this is our software intelligence — it’s not really about software, but as mentioned to me by Sir Robert, one of the reasons why we are doing this is not just to gather data or information, but to be able to really use this information for our decision-making — to be able to make profit, reduce cost, improve our schedules, improve our business outcomes, and improve our efficiency as well. So before you talk about software metering, same thing as what we did: we identified what software we were overspending on, what are the things we cannot control. These hard questions will help you get to a technology or tool — same as Open iT. So yeah, that’s all, thank you.