Armonk, NY, June 3^rd, 2021 – Harmont & Blaine, the Italian clothing company positioned in the upper premium segment today announced that it has selected IBM (NYSE: IBM) Cloud to modernize its entire IT infrastructure and support its expansion into international markets, responding more quickly and effectively to its increasingly attentive and demanding clients.

Recognized and appreciated in Italy and abroad for the modern and unique style of its men's, women's and children's collections, Harmont & Blaine needed to migrate its technological infrastructure from a traditional IT Managed Services environment to IBM Cloud to modernize its key business processes, such as supply chain, retail management and business intelligence, and rely on a solution with high customization, scalability, flexibility, and security. H&B also wanted to preserve business continuity and full compliance with industry regulations in the area of data retention by leveraging IBM’s infrastructure management services.

IBM with the support of its business partner BlueIT, is helping Harmont & Blaine transform and migrate its private IT infrastructure managed by IBM Services to IBM Cloud, modernizing also its business processes based on SAP to better support its growth to global markets through a more scalable and efficient infrastructure.

"Creative research is part of our DNA and allows us to create products that stand out for their ability to interpret Italian flair with international style, meet the preferences of our customers and retain them over time," said Daniele Ondeggia, Harmont & Blaine Chief Operating Officer. "The migration to IBM Cloud goes precisely in this direction, ensuring that we have the opportunity to manage the surprising growth in demand, in full reliability, security and with the flexibility needed to deal with in this particular situation of the market."

The migration involves moving Harmont & Blaine's IT infrastructure to a SAP-certified environment on IBM Cloud to modernize its architecture and make it scalable to accommodate its global expansion.  The company's IT infrastructure is provisioned through the IBM Cloud data center in Milan with dedicated and virtualized resources to ensure business continuity and the possibility of disaster recovery.

In this project, IBM is now collaborating with its partner BlueIT, which plays a key role in the infrastructure modernization process. The IBM-BlueIT solution includes a hybrid cloud architecture, consisting of a private infrastructure in the IBM Cloud, with economic and operational benefits. In addition, thanks to the features of IBM Cloud and the support of SAP environments, the migration is anticipated to be implemented directly through IBM Cloud, without business disruption and will give the ability to dynamically adjust resources over time, with high levels of enterprise-grade support available 24x7.

"We are living a period of deep and rapid transformation and we are proud to be able to support together with our ecosystem companies like Harmont&Blaine in facing the current challenges and expanding into new markets, also thanks to our global and local experience in fashion retail," commented Alessandro La Volpe, Vice President IBM Technology Italy. "By leveraging hybrid cloud, Harmont&Blaine can access an innovative infrastructure, that is agile, up-to-date and easily adaptable to the expanding needs of the company, particularly those of customization and optimization."

"Rapidity, operational efficiency and contractual transparency were crucial to the success of the solution proposed to Harmont&Blaine," added Girolamo Marazzi, CEO of BlueIT. "The presence of a solid technology partner with global presence and local proximity allows Harmont&Blaine provided the flexibility, speed and reliability needed to manage growth and export the Made in Italy around the world."

HARMONT & BLAINE SpA

Harmont & Blaine is an Italian company characterized by the well-known Dachshund logo, which manufactures and distributes high-end upper-casual smart clothing destined for the premium segment of the market.More than 600 direct and 1000 indirect employees, Harmont & Blaine S.p.A. is headquartered in Naples. The brand is strongly recognized in Italy and abroad for its ability to interpret the Mediterranean lifestyle, with collections characterized by high quality and a constant search for new colors, shapes and materials that respond to the demands of an increasingly attentive and demanding international consumer. Harmont & Blaine’s distribution network comprises 99 monobrand stores, 464 multibrand boutiques and 58 department store shop-in-shops and corners in 34 countries around the world. In October 2014, the Company opened the capital to the Investment Fund Clessidra.
www.harmontblaine.com

IBM Cloud

www.ibm.com/cloud

BlueIT

www.blueit.it

Contact:

Hannah Slocum
IBM Communications
hslocum@us.ibm.com