Online Bank Boursorama Turns to SoftLayer from IBM to Host Web-Based IT

PARIS, June 30, 2014 IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Boursorama, a subsidiary of the Societe Generale group, today announced that they have signed a five-year services agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Boursorama will move its web-based IT to SoftLayer Cloud infrastructure to implement a solution that will ensure continuous business operations and rapid growth.

Boursorama is a pioneer and a leader in online banking, online brokerage and financial information. Today, the online bank offers a wide range of products and services, including a set of free offerings that have spurred growing customer adoption. Fast growing since 2010, Boursorama approached IBM to increase its operational efficiency by developing an outsourcing strategy capable of supporting its rapid growth and ensuring high availability and always-on operations.

By deploying its services on SoftLayer, Boursorama will be able to improve management of IT resources by quickly activating servers based on specific client needs and usage. It will also continue to deliver new and innovative offerings at a lower cost thanks to the flexibility brought by the IBM Cloud solution, and will strengthen the security and resilience of its websites.

"We consider quality and availability of the website to be one of the pillars of the development of our company," said Marie Cheval, CEO at Boursorama. "The agreement with IBM will help us implement a proven technology infrastructure that will let us continue to grow while also giving us the opportunity to improve our website's resilience, our website being our main means of communication with our clients."

Moving forward, Boursorama will be able to mitigate risks and reduce costs by also utilizing a global 24x7 managed backup solution for their back office that leverages one of IBM's 150 business resiliency centers. These centers speed up recovery times by providing faster access to crucial applications and data.

"The introduction of new and innovative offerings, like SoftLayer Cloud and business continuity, coupled with our integrated approach and industry-specific expertise allows our clients to differentiate themselves in the market and do so in an accelerated way," said Remi Lassiaille, General Manager, Global Technology Services for IBM France. "Looking forward, Boursorama will be able to provide its customers the services they expect while ensuring that the quality and security of these offerings are optimized."

Today, IBM also announced the opening of a new Cloud datacenter in London as part of its $1.2 billion investment to expand its global datacenter footprint. This new IBM datacenter, designed for enterprise use, will provide IBM Cloud clients with the ability to run workloads and store and control data locally in the UK to improve application performance by lowering latency.

About Boursorama

Boursorama, part of the Societe Generale Group, is a major player in online banking in Europe with 733,536 customers, 1,179,110 direct accounts and total assets under management of 18.6bn euros at end of December 2013. In France, Boursorama is the online bank of reference: more than 505,000 customers, at end of 2013, rely on its innovative, simple, inexpensive and secure bank offering. Its portal, www.boursorama.com, is the leading financial and economic online information website. Boursorama is also active in Spain, under the Self Bank brand, and in Germany, Boursorama is a major player in brokerage and in financial and economic online information, through its brand OnVista.