EMC
Announces World's First Automated "Pay As You Go" Billing for
Storage Infrastructure
EMC News Release, 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.
About EMC
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.#
|