Drilling Down on Digital Inefficiencies with License Optimization & Harvesting
Highlights
- Industry-leading subsurface modeling software: $2-3M annual savings on licenses (costs reduced from $12M to $9.5M) and 75% improvement in license utilization (from 75% idle to 75% active).
- Specialized geological modeling software: 50% cost reduction, saving $2M.
- Industry-standard drilling engineering software: $600K saved, further reductions expected.
- Expanded monitoring beyond geoscience to reservoir engineering, well operations, and petrophysics.
- Introduced license harvesting—reclaiming idle licenses and increasing efficiency.
- Anonymized reporting was implemented to comply with internal privacy policies.
- Future-proofing software management with additional optimizations planned for cloud-based applications.
Company and Business Overview
A leading Energy supermajor with over 100,000 employees and $200 billion in revenue operates a very large digital product portfolio, spanning exploration, reservoir engineering, production, and Well operations. Their specialized software suite includes industry-leading tools for subsurface modeling, well operations, geophysical interpretation, and advanced reservoir modeling, supporting end-to-end operations from subsurface analysis to production management.
The company runs its internal cloud-based infrastructure, ensuring secure and seamless access to its integrated toolset across global locations. This setup proved invaluable during the pandemic, allowing operations to continue without disruption.
Business Challenges
The company then faced escalating software costs and inefficiencies due to a fragmented and unmonitored software portfolio. Ownership of digital applications was spread across multiple teams, and there had been no systematic review of license usage for some time.
Key challenges included:
- $50 M+ product portfolio was tracked using outdated spreadsheets.
- Lack of centralized software management, which led to overspending.
- Complex approval processes that required extensive manual efforts.
Recognizing the need for change, the company assembled a dedicated business analytics team to modernize software asset management and optimize licensing costs.
Whitepapers
Cost Allocation and IT Chargeback
The most efficient way to create more accountability and awareness of how IT resources are used is to implement a chargeback system.
Software Usage Monitoring and Optimization
Learn how usage monitoring in an E&P IT environment can be beneficial for many stakeholders.
Rising Use of Subscription and Pay-per-Use Software Licensing Models
Have a meaningful software usage metrics and tools to evaluate and plan appropriately prior to making new licensing decisions.
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