CASE STUDYCASE STUDYECMD combines craftsmanship, digital innovation,
and a global view to meet 100% of its customer needs

ECMD is a manufacturer, importer, and distributor ofspecialty building materials with a mission to better the livesof their employees. Rooted in small town, rural, southernvalues, ECMD keeps it real, honest, down to earth, andauthentic. Founded by innovative entrepreneurs whocreated the modern building materials global supply chain,
it is their passion and integrity that remain the fabric of
ECMD’s culture and driving force behind their 5 operating
divisions that collectively provide their customers with theproducts they need, when they need them.

“We wanted a reliable, high-performancestorage solution to run our entire infrastructurethat is afforable and easy to manage on adaily basis. Infinidat fills the bill perfectly withcapacity-on-demand, allowing us to grow thesolution to our needs.”

Steve Brown
Vice President, MIS
ECMD

EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE EFFICIENCY AND SCALE
What makes ECMD unique is how it has been able to combine the ideals of traditional craftsmanship with principles
of modern technology to design innovative supply chains, products, and services. ECMD now boasts the industry’s
premier technology platform, providing a fully integrated digital infrastructure that answers the needs of retail andwholesale customers with on-demand specifications, support, and expert advice on installations, code issues,and product characteristics 24 hours a day. That same technology platform enables the management of complex
supply chains to bring the best millwork and building materials from all over the world—or just down the road—rightto the supplier’s doorstep.
UPGRADING ECMD’S STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE
ECMD’s business model and competitive advantage are based on the application of innovative technology,automation, and operational efficiency. Seven years ago, ECMD chose the IBM XIV storage platform—developed
by Infinidat founder Moshe Yanai—for its mission-critical, enterprise-class storage capabilities. High maintenancerenewal and upgrade costs, and the uncertain future support for the XIV platform, forced ECMD’s IT leadership tobegin looking at alternatives for their business. Together with its IT business partner, Dynamix Group, ECMD began
its investigation of storage solutions to meet the company’s current and future needs.
After extensive analysis, ECMD selected yet another solution designed by Moshe Yanai—the InfiniBox® enterprisestorage system from Infinidat.

Logistics &Distribution

Manufacturing

Store Setor Reset

Planogram
Development

Associate
Training

Merchandising
Deployment

Gathering ofPOS Data

Consumer
SaleCycle CountAnalysis ofPOS Data

Customer

On-Site Store
Service Routine

ECMD harnesses the power of technology to drive customer-centric "lateral thinking". Coordinating management of the vertical supply chain
using an array of merchandising functions at the retail level can be the difference between success and failure in today's retail environment.

THE ECMD-INFINIDAT PARTNERSHIPECMD acquired an InfiniBox F2230 for each of its two data center sites. Thesesystems came with 249TB usable after data protection, and before any data
reduction technologies like compression. Today, ECMD runs its key businessapplications on VMware, with eight ESX hosts running approximately 120 virtual
machines on InfiniBox. Applications include custom-written applications for internaland external operations, hosting for the company’s various public websites,
numerous mission critical SQL Server databases, Microsoft Exchange hosting theentire corporations’ email, and robust mobile apps for employees, partners, andcustomers.
In addition, ECMD employs disaster recovery methodology consisting of VMware
SRM and Infinidat’s low-latency asynchronous replication to protect and meetbusiness and customer needs during a crisis. Using Infinidat’s Capacity-on-Demandmodel, ECMD pays for only the capacity it needs, with the option to upgrade
capacity at any time in 10TB increments. In the event of an emergency or need for
additional storage, ECMD has immediate, on-demand access to as much capacity
as it needs.
Today, as a result of its partnership with Dynamix and Infinidat, ECMD benefits
from mission-critical enterprise storage that is easily managed, highly scalable,
and extremely cost-effective. The system is also set up for high-availability
replication to ECMD’s disaster recovery data center, providing for quick recovery
of major services if anything interferes with operations. According to Steve Brown,
ECMD’s VP of MIS, “Infinidat helps us compete with and win against much larger
competitors. In addition to unmatched performance, availability, and cost, InfiniBox
is incredibly easy to manage. With a small IT team, we can’t afford a dedicated
FTE just to manage storage.” To learn more about how Infinidat can help yourorganization scale to win, visit Infinidat.com.

info@infinidat.com | +1.855.900.4634
CS-ECMD-190701-US | © Infinidat 2023

“Upgrades are seamless andnonintrusive. We’ve beenrunning our Infinidat unit forover two years, and haven’t
lost a single drive! Of course,that’s probably an outlier, butnevertheless we can attest
to the extreme reliability ofInfinidat.”
Jason Shumate
Technical Support Team Mgr.
ECMD