LookSmart Announces its NovaTech Managed IT Services Offering

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- LookSmart (Nasdaq: LOOK) today announced the availability of their new NovaTech managed IT service, created to meet the growing demand for managed services. NovaTech operates out of the company's Phoenix data center, that is part of a strategic investment LookSmart has made in the Data Center and Managed Service Provider (MSP) business.

NovaTech's combination of Managed Services, Specialized Hosting and Private VPN services put it in the center of a growing MSP market that is being driven by the scale and complexity of today's network driven IT environment.

According to a recently released MarketsandMarkets report, the managed services market is forecast to grow to $256 billion by 2018, up from $143 billion in 2013. Over the next five years, it will experience a 12 percent compound annual growth rate.

"The recent trend in the industry shows that there is a high demand for managed hosting services across every industry vertical," explained the report's coordinators. "The implementation of managed services reduces IT costs by 30 to 40 percent."

NovaTech's cloud based services include a private cloud ecosystem comprised of multi-vendor enterprise technologies and capabilities while serving as a production research and development environment to support the needs of companies who need to scale their IT operations quickly and securely.

"Social, Search, Mobile and Big-Data applications from startups to enterprises can gain an operational advantage with NovaTech's hyper-scaling expertise that can power an organization's most critical data-intensive workloads at the intersection of this generation's defining trends. LookSmart has achieved ROI improvements of 200% to 300% by switching to NovaTech from previous hosting providers. We invite CIOs to request a free consultation of your IT infrastructure costs," said Michael Onghai, LookSmart's Chief Executive Officer.

The increased volume and network complexity in today's IT environment requires companies to architect, operate and manage networks very differently. Business users, who have been influenced by social networking, YouTube and the growth of mobility application use, expect new offerings, which often introduce sophisticated security issues and threats, according to a recent report by ACG Research.

"The Data Center includes enterprise and carrier-grade managed IT Operations. With the agility of a high-speed tech startup, NovaTech can deploy and support robust advanced technology capabilities for customer requirements, strategic relationships, and partner engagements," said John Raven, NovaTech's President and Chief Operations Officer.

NovaTech's team of military veterans believes that managed IT service security is critical for enterprises. Internal management and monitoring of standalone systems have high costs and difficulty staying ahead of an increasingly complex threat landscape.

If you are a CIO or a Private equity fund who cares about improving the ROI on the IT infrastructure costs of your companies, fill out the Contact Us form at http://novatech.io/contact-us/

About NovaTech, a LookSmart Company

NovaTech, a LookSmart Company, operates a cloud infrastructure platform built for Internet scale. From its data center in Phoenix, Arizona, NovaTech provides managed IT services powering its clients' leading-edge applications for customers ranging from Web startups to global enterprises. NovaTech provides customers with a managed, on-demand private cloud infrastructure, incorporating the efficiency of bare metal and elasticity of virtual servers, storage, and networking. NovaTech and LookSmart are teaming up with Private Equity and Venture firms to inexpensively and efficiently scale their companies' products and services without having to make the upfront investment of time and personnel to achieve their goals. At the same time, NovaTech is teaming up with several leading technology vendors to provide enterprise-grade hardware, software, and managed service capabilities to provide users with an environment to build, test, develop, and deploy to a variety of environments. NovaTech can help customers create and access public, private, and hybrid cloud environments capable of supporting their most demanding requirements. NovaTech's initial catalog of services includes infrastructure as a service; self-service test and development sandboxes; SSL/VPN connectivity for remote users; a large array of physical infrastructure to support LAN/WAN topology test and evaluation.

For more information, please visit novatech.io.

About LookSmart, Ltd.

LookSmart is a pioneer in online advertising. Founded in 1997, LookSmart has been connecting advertisers and agencies to high quality sources of inventory for performance marketing, and helps online publishers monetize their inventory through our award winning Ad Center platform. LookSmart's highly scalable technology processes billions of search queries on a daily basis, enabling marketers to bid in real-time across search and display inventory, and leverage intent data to get performance that meets aggressive campaign goals. LookSmart also operates Clickable.com, a technology-enabled solutions company that uses social media data to help some of the world's most valuable brands understand their customer needs and improve performance, as well as providing a technology-enabled services company that helps companies and agencies manage their online marketing for themselves and their clients. LookSmart is based in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.looksmart.com, www.clickable.com, or call (415) 348-7000.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results contemplated by the forward-looking statements, including assumptions that may or may not be correct or accurate due to the inherent uncertainty of future events, the actions of third parties we cannot control or predict with certainty, and other factors that may cause us to change our plans.

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SOURCE LookSmart, Ltd.