EMC News Release
EMC Announces World's First Automated "Pay As You Go" Billing for Storage Infrastructure
Enhances EMC's Ability to Provide 'On Demand' Access to Storage Resources
Hopkinton, Mass.- Monday, July 21, 2003
Extending its lead in simplifying how customers consume, deploy and manage their storage resources, EMC Corporation today announced the world's first automated billing capability for storage infrastructure. An integral component of EMC's OpenScale storage asset and financial management program, the new billing capability takes customers a step beyond traditional "capacity on demand" models and provides automated billing for their entire networked storage infrastructure including storage capacity, SAN switch ports, NAS servers and storage software.
OpenScale streamlines often-lengthy procurement processes and provides users with access to pre-installed storage capacity and other storage resources to meet both expected and unexpected needs. Available as a manual process for a select number of customers since 1999, OpenScale lets customers allocate additional storage resources on demand, but be billed only for the resources used. Customers benefit from the ability to quickly allocate—and now be automatically billed for—those additional resources without requiring manual, onsite technical assistance. The result is faster response to business requirements and elimination of labor-intensive manual processes.
OpenScale automated billing leverages the same underlying "agentless" collector technologies found within EMC AutoAdvice software, an online member of the EMC ControlCenter family of open software products. The collector automatically detects when pre-installed storage capacity, SAN switch ports, NAS servers and storage software are allocated by the business and provides that information to EMC's OpenScale billing application. The process is totally non-disruptive to the customer's environment. All metering and billing happens automatically, with no additional work required by EMC or the customer.
Eric Eriksen, Chief Technology Officer, Deloitte Consulting, said, "We're running very fast here. When we need storage, we don't have the luxury of waiting around. Prior to OpenScale, we had to navigate a lengthy and serial process of determining need, placing an order, receiving the storage, integrating and testing it—then we could go do our work. OpenScale strips out this entire layer of complexity, significantly improves our ability to respond and gives us the flexibility of a fully configured environment that we can tap into on demand. And, through the new automated billing, EMC has come up with yet another way to greatly simplify our lives."
David Goulden, EMC's Executive Vice President of Global Marketing and Business Development, said, "For several years, OpenScale has taken the complexity, uncertainty and much of the cost out of the storage procurement process while meeting customers' immediate needs for how they buy and deploy their storage assets. OpenScale and the new automated billing capability demonstrate EMC's longstanding lead in delivering storage service automation—automation of the underlying processes and tasks that make internal storage utility models simple and practical to implement."
Goulden added, "EMC Automated Networked Storage and programs like OpenScale are prerequisites to enabling customers to achieve the benefits of utility computing models—such as reduced complexity and variability of costs—without having to surrender architectural control or best-of-breed technologies."
EMC's OpenScale storage asset and financial management program comprises various financing options that align customers' storage budgets with their actual storage consumption. OpenScale is designed to help large customers with growing, multi-terabyte installations and complex purchasing processes to shorten procurement cycles, ensure predictable pricing for storage capacity and functionality, and reduce the need for buying storage resources in advance of actual requirements. EMC also offers a wide range of financing options to help customers of all sizes implement EMC storage infrastructures in ways that meet their budget requirements.
OpenScale provides automated billing for EMC Symmetrix, EMC CLARiiON, EMC Connectrix and EMC Celerra systems as well as EMC TimeFinder and SRDF software.
EMC Corporation is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing automated networked storage solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to better and more cost-effectively manage, protect and share their information. More information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.
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