BOGOTA, Colombia, May 7, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that LookHunters, the first e-commerce site designed to sell clothing from independent designers with editorial content, has implemented a cloud solution from SoftLayer, an IBM company, that will help the company expand its business.

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According to IBM's recent Business Value study focusing on global consumers, online shopping increased by 100 percent year-over-year in 2014, driven largely through an increase in mobile commerce. Taking advantage of this trend, retailers should be aware of the explosion of mobile technologies, social media and new requirements of consumers who require speed and service, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Leveraging cloud-based solutions helps retailers deliver faster and more robust mobile shopping experiences for their customers to ultimately help them drive sales.

After experiencing a 100 percent increase in traffic per month, LookHunters realized that it needed to quickly implement a flexible solution that would allow greater control, transparency and performance. LookHunters decided to migrate its content and database to SoftLayer's Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in an effort to improve management and operability of its website and applications. Since migrating, the fashion website has improved security to support online transactions and has been able to improve its users overall experience.

"With SoftLayer we can not only sustain our growth but enhance the user experience of browsing and buying online, which leads to greater satisfaction with our brand," said Evelyn Montoya LookHunters.

SoftLayer provides high performance, enterprise-grade infrastructure that can scale to accommodate any workload and offers a unique network architecture that optimizes global performance using a high-speed private network. Coupling SoftLayer with IBM's extensive SaaS and PaaS properties gives IBM has the largest cloud services portfolio in the industry to meet the rapidly changing needs of businesses.

"The fashion industry is very dynamic and demanding and requires staying at the forefront. With this implementation, LookHunters offers buyers a simple, innovative and easy to use platform that will directly impact on customer loyalty," said Juan Carlos Hincapie Services Manager IBM Colombia.

About IBM Cloud Computing
IBM has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world with 40,000 industry experts. Since its acquisition in 2013, IBM SoftLayer has served 4,500 new cloud clients. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of 40 data centers worldwide. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 17 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives and build a high value cloud portfolio. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more than 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM's public cloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation #ibmcloud.

Media Contacts
Karla Otranto
IBM Communications
55-11-2131-6972
kotranto@br.ibm.com

Nicholas Smith
IBM Communications
978 869 0870
nssmith@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE IBM

SOURCE: IBM