Through its Global Financial Services Division, EMC offers the OpenScale solution for on-demand capacity delivery. Businesses seeking more flexibility from the technology solutions upon which they are reliant can benefit from this on-demand storage solution. EMC`s OpenScale allows customers to seamlessly access appropriately configured storage as and when they need it.
Mark P Harris, GFS financial manager, EMC Africa explains: "OpenScale delivers fully automated billing for a complete SAN or NAS [storage area network / network-attached storage] infrastructure. OpenScale is available across all EMC platforms, catering for both the traditional direct attached storage arrays in mainframe and open system environments."
Harris notes that businesses are looking for optimal performance from IT environments. "Optimal performance goes beyond the physical characteristics of the hardware and software and extends to the financial models which are applied for service delivery. OpenScale provides companies with storage solutions that deliver capacity on-demand. The cost of deploying structured OpenScale solutions makes capacity procured under the programme comparatively more affordable than under the usual traditional cash procurement models."
Explaining how OpenScale works, Harris says additional capacity is pre-defined in consultation with the client. As the capacity is needed, the customer is able to consume this buffer capacity in line with its needs. Consumption of the allocated buffer capacity is measured by unique EMC software that sends the usage data on line to a central data warehouse which houses pre-determined, contractually agreed pricing data. The client is automatically billed without any interventions by the vendor or the customer`s own IT staff.
EMC also provides Control Centre Storage Scope software which allows the customer to audit the accuracy of the billing in line with contracted pricing.
Benefits of the OpenScale solution include improved management of service levels between the IT department and the business units.
"Instant availability of storage and the simplification of procurement cycles results in delivery of capacity when and where it is required with no administrative overhead," says Harris.
Price predictability and transparency enables customers to apply a charge back model against business units, resulting in improved financial control over storage costs.
"The future cost of storage is de-risked; it is predictable and only paid for when used," says Harris, adding that storage price erosion is built in. "In most cases, GFS is able to pass on significant savings to its customers relating the acquisition of the initial basic baseline storage requirement, in comparison to the cash procurement alternative," he says.
OpenScale is a key tool for the implementation of EMC`s Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) concept. "OpenScale allows for pre-definition of buffer capacity over various tiers of storage. This enables the client to transfer data from a higher storage tier to a lower one as the data becomes less critical," Harris says.
OpenScale is becoming the storage provisioning and purchasing model of choice," he concludes.
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