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Stoneridge

Empowering end users with CAD application licenses using OpenLM

Location: USA, Novi, Michigan
Industry: Automotive
Employees: 4 800
Product used: OpenLM On Premise Enterprise Solution
Main software monitored: AutoCAD, NX, Catia (CAD
applications)
License managers monitored: FLEXlm, DSLS, LMX

About Stoneridge

Stoneridge, Inc. is a designer and manufacturer of highly engineered electrical and electronic systems, components and modules, primarily for the automotive, commercial vehicle, motorcycle, agricultural and off-highway vehicle markets.

Since 1965, Stoneridge has designed and manufactured advanced, award-winning technologies for vehicle OEMs, including driveline and transmission actuation systems, vision systems, emissions control systems, safety systems, security and monitoring systems and much more.

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There was no central knowledge repository of what we owned and where licenses were hosted from, or what type they were

Eric Wines
PLM Architect

The challenge

As a global company with a large software stack, Stoneridge wanted to have full transparency and visibility on the software assets it owned. They wanted to know which engineering software was licensed per division, the license types, and the location of the license servers.

“Each division had installed engineering licensing tools on different servers, with different licensing packages and no planning or global coordination. There was no central knowledge repository of what we owned and where licenses were hosted from, or what type they were,”

says Eric Wines, PLM Architect at Stoneridge.

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OpenLM has the greatest amount of capability to support all the floating license types we had to manage

Eric Wines
PLM Architect

Aside from visibility, Stonebridge also wanted to streamline their software asset management by being able to see the big picture: they wanted insights into real-time license consumption, which licenses were in high-demand, and which were under-utilized. All that should be in a single dashboard for easier license management than the one used in-house.

Consolidating global licenses in a single dashboard

To gain complete control over its software assets, Autoneum chose OpenLM versatile engineering software license monitoring solution, which collects and delivers accurate data on license usage, license activity, the number of true denials, and the features engineers use within the application.

At the first stage, Eric and his team deployed the OpenLM solution to monitor the FLEXlm license manager but quickly moved to add additional license managers to the monitoring solution after seeing that OpenLM supports more than 60 license managers.

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The reporting capabilities show us which licenses are in great demand and which are under-used for increasing (or) decreasing in license and budget balancing exercises

Eric Wines
PLM Architect

“My needs came from first monitoring FLEXlm services and while searching for a responsible reporting tool, and also from an expert in this specific solution, I found OpenLM, which then met the rest of my licenses management needs as well,” 

Eric says.

Now, Autoneum uses OpenLM to monitor license managers such as Flexera Flexnet (FLEXlm), Dassault Systèmes License Server, Sentinel RMS Safenet license management system, LM-X (the management software developed by X-Formation), and others.

The results

OpenLM engineering software license monitoring and management solution allowed Stoneridge to ensure it was not under- or over-licensed. Using OpenLM reports, the company was able to map all their software assets and license types, and have all the data in one central “knowledgebase” – OpenLM EasyAdmin – where anyone from the engineering team or IT support could immediately check current and historical license usage for reporting.

Optimizing the Stoneridge license inventory

One of the immediate results of having OpenLM monitor license consumption was that they discovered licenses that were either not in use or were generating low usage records. “The reporting capabilities show us which licenses are in great demand and which are under-used for increasing/decreasing in license and budget balancing exercises,” Eric explains. This helped Stoneridge optimize their software assets and budget.

ROI

OpenLM gave Stoneridge the opportunity to optimize their license inventory, while improving access and productivity at the same time. The company’s return on investment was almost immediate, because Eric and his team were able to identify lack of use, inefficiency, and overspend. A key feature used by Stoneridge to measure ROI was the real-time view of how licenses were being utilized and whether they were active or idle. “ROI for us is measured in how well we are now keeping licenses available for our user community through real-time tracking and, most importantly, knowing when licenses will expire in advance for needed renewals,” Eric concluded.

About OpenLM

OpenLM can manage many of the different engineering software tools in the organization software inventory, giving a consolidated view rather than having to rely on each vendor’s own license management software or a cumbersome utility built in-house. OpenLM is a solution tailored to engineering software and manages licenses from thousands of vendors. Not only does OpenLM provide more information about your CAD applications than the license manager provided by the vendor but it also provides valuable data on other engineering software using many types of different license managers, such as Dassault’s DSLS and Sentinel RMS. If you are using OpenLM to manage AutoCAD licenses, your workload is reduced, and your control increased. The superior query and reporting functions enable you to optimize your licensing ecosystem with confidence, based on facts, not guesswork. Your community of CAD users are able to operate at maximum efficiency and with a minimum of downtime or unavailability.
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