Engineering and technical software asset management for mining
Every tonne you mine carries a software cost. Your license servers won’t tell you what it is.
A mine runs on a dozen vendors’ software: Leapfrog and Vulcan in exploration, Rocscience and FLAC3D in planning, Deswik in production. Open iT puts its usage on one record, so you renew on what got used, not on last year’s seat count.
- See exploration, planning, and engineering software in one usage history
- Differentiate Leapfrog license usage from productive modeling time
- Free up idle licenses while keeping the user's work intact
Unchecked software renewals inflate the cost of your resources.
In mining, software helps determine both the value of the resource and the cost of extracting it. Geological modeling supports resource valuations, while mine planning, optimization, scheduling, and production applications influence how much ore is mined and at what cost. These are business-critical systems with a direct influence on financial performance.
But how closely are their costs managed?
Mining companies often operate multiple licensing systems from different software vendors, with limited visibility into actual utilization. Annual renewals can become routine exercises based on last year’s license counts rather than current requirements. Feedback from a major mining company suggests that monitoring software usage is not necessarily a priority.
The consequences become more significant as commodity prices fluctuate. Strong markets support mining lower-grade, higher-cost ore. When prices retreat, those operations become vulnerable, and every avoidable fixed cost puts additional pressure on margins.
Open iT has identified idle rates of 20–40% in engineering software environments. Consider a company spending $10 million annually on software. A 10% reduction in licensing expenditure would deliver $1 million in annual savings, without reducing production, changing mine plans, or compromising engineering capability.
The question is not whether mining companies need sophisticated software. It is whether they are paying for more than they actually use.
What Open iT Does
1
Put every mining application on one record.
LicenseAnalyzer™ meters more than 6,000 applications across 100 supported license manager configurations. Leapfrog, the Rocscience suite, FLAC3D, GeoStudio and Oasis Montaj are on the supported list. Maptek Vulcan’s network license runs on FlexNet, which Open iT reads natively. Where a license manager sits outside the list, the Generic License Utility reads its command-line output.
2
Tell an open session from a geologist working in it.
True Active Usage reads CPU, I/O, keystroke and mouse activity on the workstation. A Leapfrog window left open through a site meeting stops counting as demand. Usernames can be anonymized, reversibly or irreversibly.
3
Reclaim idle seats without losing the work.
Open iT reclaims an idle license with one of four actions (log, standby, suspend or terminate) and applies time-of-day and day-of-week rules. Suspend returns the license to the pool and leaves the model on the screen. A solver run burning CPU counts as active work and is left alone.
4
Renew pillar by pillar, on measured use.
Twelve months of concurrency per application and per module, metered on your own infrastructure, turns a renewal from a seat-count argument into an evidence one. Split it by exploration, planning, design and production, and each budget owner sees their own number.
The mining software estate, by pillar
Most mining applications span more than one pillar. Datamine and the GEOVIA portfolio cover modeling, estimation and planning. Deswik covers planning and production. Leapfrog sits mainly in exploration.
| Pillar | What the software does | Applications mines run | How Open iT reaches them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exploration and resource geology | Geological modeling, resource estimation, geophysics | Leapfrog Geo, Datamine, GEOVIA Surpac, Maptek Vulcan, Micromine, Oasis Montaj | Leapfrog and Oasis Montaj are on the supported list. Vulcan runs on FlexNet. Datamine, Surpac and Micromine are confirmed per site in scoping. |
| Mine planning and scheduling | Pit optimization, mine design, scheduling, slope stability and ground support | GEOVIA Whittle and MineSched, Hexagon MinePlan, Minemax Scheduler, Rocscience RS2, RS3 and Slide, Itasca FLAC3D and 3DEC, GeoStudio, Civil 3D | Rocscience, FLAC3D, 3DEC, GeoStudio and Civil 3D are on the supported list, through Sentinel, FlexNet and the Generic License Utility. Whittle, MineSched, MinePlan and Minemax are confirmed per site in scoping. |
| Design and validation | Engineering design, simulation and product data for structures, shafts, hoists and plant | PTC Creo and Windchill, SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Ansys, Siemens Teamcenter | On the supported list, through FlexNet. |
| Production and operations | Production planning, fleet management, dispatch, production reporting | Deswik Suite, Hexagon MineOperate, Pitram | Confirmed per site in scoping. |
We spend millions on subsurface software. A solution like Open iT is a no-brainer.
— Matt Hollingsworth, Senior Systems Analyst, Devon Energy
Have questions? Talk to a licensing specialist.
Mining Software Savings Calculator
Enter what you spend on software in each part of the mine and see what recovering a share of it is worth, pillar by pillar. No email needed to see the result.
Leapfrog Geo, Datamine, GEOVIA Surpac, Maptek Vulcan, Micromine, Oasis Montaj
GEOVIA Whittle and MineSched, Hexagon MinePlan, Minemax, Rocscience, FLAC3D, 3DEC, GeoStudio, Civil 3D
PTC Creo and Windchill, SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Ansys, Siemens Teamcenter
Deswik, Hexagon MineOperate, Pitram
Don’t know the split? Put your whole engineering software budget in the pillar it mostly serves.
20 percent is what Devon Energy took off its subsurface software budget, the nearest published result to a mining estate. Change it if you have your own figure.
estimated recoverable each year
- Spend you keep
- Recoverable
- Your annual software spend
- $0
- Recoverable over three years
- $0
More opportunities for saving on software expenses
The calculator applies one rate to everything. Measured use shows where the savings actually sit.
- Reclaim idle seats without closing the work. Open iT sees idle rates of 20 to 40 percent across engineering estates. Suspend hands an idle license back to the pool and leaves the model on the screen, so the geologist picks up where they stopped.
- Buy seats only when denials prove the need. Where the license manager logs them, Open iT records every user turned away. A request for more seats then arrives with evidence, or doesn’t arrive at all.
- Renew to peak demand, not to last year’s seat count. Twelve months of use per application and module shows your peak against what you pay for. That is the number to bring to the vendor.
- Share one pool across sites and shifts. Reclaim rules run by time of day and day of week, so a seat left open overnight or over a shift change at one site goes back to the pool for another.
- Start where Open iT reads your software today. Leapfrog, Rocscience, FLAC3D, GeoStudio, Oasis Montaj, Creo, SolidWorks, Ansys and Teamcenter are on Open iT’s supported list, and Maptek Vulcan runs on FlexNet. Datamine, Surpac, Deswik, MinePlan and Micromine are confirmed site by site.
Figures in USD. The 20 percent default is Devon Energy’s published result (Open iT customer success story, openit.com, 2022), an energy customer. It is not a projection for your operation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is engineering and technical software asset management for mining?
It’s the practice of measuring how a mine’s specialist software gets used (geology, mine planning, geotechnical and design applications) and managing licenses against that measurement. A software inventory records what is installed. It doesn’t record who checked out a license, when, or for how long. Open iT reads the license servers and the workstations, then reports use per application, module and pillar.
Which mining applications can Open iT meter?
Open iT supports a wide range of mining and engineering software, including Leapfrog, Oasis Montaj, Rocscience, Itasca FLAC3D and 3DEC, GeoStudio, Civil 3D, PTC Creo and Windchill, SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Ansys, and Siemens Teamcenter.
Maptek Vulcan uses the FlexNet licensing system, which Open iT can monitor. For other mining applications, including Datamine, Surpac, Deswik, MinePlan, and Micromine, Open iT first determines how their licenses are managed and what is needed to track usage. Some may require additional configuration using Open iT’s Generic License Utility rather than a direct, built-in connection.
We don’t track software usage today. Where do we start?
With what your license servers already record. The first stage reads every check-out: who used which application, when, for how long, how many people at once, and who was turned away. That alone shows your peak against what you pay for. Measuring real activity at the workstation and reclaiming idle seats come later, once the baseline exists.
Will reclaiming a seat interrupt a model or a scheduling run?
No. Only idle sessions are targeted. A solver or scheduling run using CPU counts as active work. Suspend hands the license back and keeps the session on the screen, and time-of-day rules keep a shift change or a planning deadline out of scope.
Is this monitoring individual geologists and engineers?
No. Workstation activity is measured to separate an idle session from an active one, and usernames can be anonymized, reversibly or irreversibly. Trend analysis that never names a person is the normal way to run it.
We already run ServiceNow or another SAM tool. Do we need this as well?
They do different jobs. A SAM tool tracks what is installed and what you’re entitled to. Engineering software is checked out from license servers, and that check-out record is what Open iT measures, per application and module. The two work together: Open iT usage data can feed ServiceNow, so your SAM team sees engineering use alongside the rest of the estate.
Your vendors know exactly what you contracted. Nobody on your side knows what you used, because the answer sits on a dozen license servers that don’t talk to each other. One record across exploration, planning, design and production closes that gap, and turns software from a fixed cost in every tonne you produce into one you manage.