OpenScale streamlines procurement processes and provides users with access to pre-installed storage capacity and other storage resources to meet both expected and unexpected needs. OpenScale lets users allocate additional storage resources on demand, but be billed only for the resources used.

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.

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."