Morrison
Hershfield

We only need to reduce our license pool by one license in each country to realize enough of a cost benefit to justify the software.

“OpenLM has helped us manage costs during a difficult transition period in the industry” Robert Welsford

IT Manager

This Canadian company was pioneered over 70 years ago, offering civil, structural and mechanical engineering services.

Over the years their reputation and quality of service has led to them expanding across Canada and the United States, with a workforce of 1000 and 20 branches across North America. They have also opened a branch in India in Andhra Pradesh’s capital, Visakhapatnam, one of India’s designated Smart Cities.

Morrison Hershfield has understood the challenges of the 21st century and are experts in sustainability and green building consultation, audits and construction. They offer a wide range of services in disciplines ranging from water management to telecoms. MH is also noted for their expertise in data center site selection, design and build and are invited to address many events on data centers and edge computing.

Morrison Hershfield Project

One of their recent projects, was the design of a water and sanitation upgrade for Guyana Water Inc. for which they received an excellence award from the Alberta Consulting Engineers Association.

They have recently been recognized as one of the largest MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing) and fire protection engineering companies in the US, ranking 58th in the top 100.

We would like to thank John Dutz, Corporate BIM/CAD Manager and Robert Welsford, IT Manager, for their friendly and rapid response to our request for information.

Finding a Solution for the License Challenge

Nearly four years ago, Morrison Hershfield recognized that they needed to manage the costs on their engineering software licenses. They were faced with the common situation that they had users complaining that licenses were unavailable for specific products, while at the same time they had an oversupply of other licenses.

With the key objectives of reducing costs while simultaneously eliminating license denials, they started investigating the market. The SaaS service offered by OpenLM appealed as a solution for managing licenses for their 500 users. The decision was made and the transition was swift, just a few hours according to Robert Welsford, IT Manager.

For the 500 users mentioned, the following software licenses are monitored and managed by OpenLM.

Management of software is done for all MH sites, including India, which was added recently because of their growing portfolio of software licenses.

Saving on Costs, Gaining Control

Benefits were derived over a range of pain-points.

Under-utilization of licenses

There was a surplus of more than 20% on licenses purchased for some applications. While MH recognized intuitively that there was wastage, the number of licenses and the cost could not be quantified prior to using OpenLM.

The move to subscriptions

Vendors such as Autodesk, who are forcing customers to move to subscription licenses are causing huge cost increases per license. OpenLM’s SaaS solution has definitely helped mitigate the effects and reduce the cost increases as much as possible.

Unexpected benefits

The data made available enabled decisions to be made about CAD workstation upgrades.

Managing requirements for more licenses

MH could now work on facts about license utilization, rather than guessing. This allowed to make decisions for both current and future license needs. MH reckon that they would have overspent tens of thousands of dollars without the data provided by the service.

Improved availability

The reduction of licenses had no effect on license availability. In fact, access improved, with a reduction in the number of denials experienced.

Return on Investment (ROI) is just One License Away

The service pays for itself very easily. John Dutz stated that they only need to reduce the license pool in each country by one license per year to cost-justify the software. This amounts to less than 0.5% of the total license portfolio and is easily met on an annual basis.

Are MH Happy with the Service?

Yes, indeed. Apart from the seamless transition initially, current service is rated as good overall, from response time and problem resolution through to proactive management. Because of OpenLM’s need to keep their software product up-to-date, they are usually the first to know of new challenges that will impact the engineering software community and this knowledge is transferred to the SaaS support team.

A Lasting Partnership

After nearly 4 years of using OpenLM’s SaaS service, Morrison Hershfield is happy with the control they have over their licenses and the ability to predict future needs. Outsourcing license management to OpenLM, whose core competence is in understanding license management for engineering software, relieves MH of the operational overheads of ensuring license availability to its 500 engineers worldwide, ensuring productivity while not incurring unnecessary costs. We look forward to maintaining and strengthening our relationship in the future.

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