Solina, a leading global business in the food industry, has selected Interoute, owner of Europe's largest cloud services platform, to unite its production sites with a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Solina has nine production sites in Europe, three in France, three in Belgium, two in the Netherlands and one in Sweden, that connect to its other global locations.

After the merger of the French Sfinc and Belgian Savena group under the Solina name in early 2012, the company was left with two national network providers covering multiple international sites. It is now using Interoute's advanced pan European network for all its European voice and data needs, replacing its previous two national network providers, with one international provider. Interoute's network will also help to improve the performance of Solina's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution and allow it to centralise much of its shared business software applications. Interoute's Unified ICT approach, which integrates connectivity, communications and computing across the same networked cloud platform, is also enabling three of the business's sites to adopt Interoute's video conferencing solution to further aid collaboration. In the near future the company also plans to deploy an innovative corporate social network, to aid internal communications and improve productivity using the same platform.

François Cléban, ICT Manager of Solina group said: "Following the merger of the Belgian- Dutch and French Sfinc Savena to create Solina, we had two network providers, one with a Belgian network and the other with a French network. Extending either network outside its borders would have been extremely expensive. So we chose Interoute's advanced international network, which performs better and is 30% more cost effective. The Interoute team really listened to what we were trying to achieve, so we could work together to develop the best solution. It has been a pleasure to work with the local Interoute teams in Paris and Brussels, which made for a great experience."

Jan Louwes Interoute EVP, Enterprise Solutions, commented: "Solina is a group that develops through acquisitions and Interoute's Unified ICT approach and International networked cloud platform is a perfect fit for business that are looking gain efficiency, performance and cost benefits through consolidation. As Solina looks to the future and new emerging markets, Interoute's international scale will be an asset to support its ongoing growth."

To ensure business continuity for Solina, Interoute has implemented a data replication solution for the French and Belgian data centres which includes diverse high capacity network connectivity for both sites. And thanks to Interoute's deep reserves of network fibre (currently the operator is only using 17% of its available fibre capacity) increasing bandwidth demands from new mergers, acquisitions or organic growth can easily be accommodated.

Part of Solina's strategy is to open new test laboratories in different countries where they can be closer to customers and respond quickly to their demands for research and development. In the future these laboratories could also be connected with Solina's production sites via Interoute's network to form a unified Solina cloud to support its ongoing development of innovative new solutions for the food industry.