A high-pressure project

The CEWE Stiftung & Co. KGaA, headquartered in Oldenburg, is one of Europe's leading companies in the field of photo services and digital printing solutions. CEWE is known for its high-quality photo products such as the CEWE PHOTOBOOK, photo calendars, wall pictures, and photo gifts. In addition, the company operates a state-of-the-art production facility for commercial digital printing and offers services for business customers in the B2B sector. The company employs approximately 5,000 people across Europe and reported a revenue of 832.8 million euros in the 2024 financial year.

At one of its production sites in France, CEWE faced the challenge of fundamentally modernizing its IT infrastructure. The server room there had been set up back in 2009 and no longer met current security or energy efficiency standards. At the same time, the company was planning to acquire a new high-performance digital printing machine, for which additional production space had to be created. This dual objective – modernizing the IT infrastructure while optimizing space – led to the decision to dismantle the old server room and replace it with a compact, turnkey solution.

The choice fell on the Data Center Group, which offered the DC IT Safe Triple, a triple-linked micro data center, providing an especially space-saving, secure, and technically high-quality data center solution. The data center solution combines all essential components of a traditional server room in a very compact space while also offering high physical security, including robust steel constructions, integrated climate control, and lockable doors. For CEWE, this was the ideal solution to relocate their server technology to another room on the site while simultaneously gaining the necessary space for digital printing.

Due to the limited ceiling height on site, some structural special features had to be taken into account and the installation had to be precisely adapted to the conditions. The construction of the DC IT Safe began at the end of March 2025 and was already completed on April 2 – two days earlier than originally planned. Immediately afterwards, the CEWE team took over the complete relocation of the server technology independently. The very next working day, operations resumed as usual – without any outages or disruptions, highlighting the quality of the planning and implementation.

The new IT safe brings numerous advantages for CEWE. The required space is significantly smaller compared to the previous server room, allowing the new printing machine to be set up without any problems. At the same time, the modern air conditioning has considerably reduced energy consumption. The physical security of the IT systems has been noticeably improved, as the data center functions as a closed, shielded system. The facility is low-maintenance, expandable, and fully integrated into the existing IT infrastructure. Overall, CEWE now benefits from a stable, future-proof solution that meets both technical and economic requirements.

The customer was particularly impressed by the reliable execution. The project managers praised the good communication, the precise adherence to the schedule, and the professional execution by the Data Center Group. The production management was also very satisfied, as the uninterrupted IT migration caused no impact on ongoing business processes."I initially had some concerns, as I had never seen such an IT safe live before. But the result convinced me. It is a stable, secure, and neatly constructed room that exactly meets our requirements. It was especially important for us that the move took place without disrupting production operations – and that worked perfectly," says Oliver Biederer, IT Manager CEWE France.