The France-headquartered book printing specialist, which has both book and commercial printing services in the UK, has adopted Interoute’s cloud services and virtual private network (VPN).

Interoute lays claim to being the largest supplier of cloud-based services in Europe.

CPI’s bespoke customer platform, Highway, will now be hosted on Interoute’s cloud. This will provide customers with one point of entry for every CPI plant, giving clients better access to information about the status of their jobs across CPI’s 17 sites in seven countries.

Anthony Morin, CPI marketing and IT solutions director said the group had investigated proposals from a range of suppliers for hosting and network solutions.

“Our choice was to go with Interoute, which was able to propose a pan-European approach with teams in France, Germany, England, Netherlands and everywhere we operate in Western Europe,” he said.

Alison Kaye, CPI UK divisional general manager of STMA and commercial, added that the group’s UK customers were increasingly looking for Europe-wide solutions: “Interoute delivers better redundancy as well as a flat corporate-wide platform. Via Highway, this allows full group transparency and visibility in terms of capacity and operations across all of our European sites.

“This allows us to operate more seamlessly as a pan-European business rather than country specific, a need an increasing number of our customers require.”

CPI has opted for a full managed services contract with Interoute that involves 24/7 support, 365 days a year.

The deal is part of a long-term strategy that could include CPI taking additional services in future, such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and video conferencing. The value of the contract was not disclosed.