Tornator

About Tornator

Tornator is a Finnish forestry company. Its technology organisation runs on a deliberate, consultant-led operating model: a small core IT team orchestrates external partners who deliver and develop the systems the business depends on. It is an efficient way to run, and it asks a lot of the partners involved. They have to think independently, see the whole picture, and advise on decisions that go beyond day-to-day execution.

The Challenge

When Tornator approached Cloud2 nearly two years ago, the cloud environment had grown to a scale where it needed a different kind of partner. The platform had been built up over years by several capable suppliers, each focused on the piece in front of them. That work had carried Tornator a long way. What the environment now called for was a single hand on the architecture as a whole. Someone who could connect the pieces, lift governance up a level, and bring the platform to the next stage of maturity.

The network reflected this growth most visibly. Built in parallel across several teams, it had become harder to reason about as a single system. Tornator’s IT leadership recognised the moment had come to consolidate it, and to put a coherent governance frame around the broader AWS environment.

Tornator’s IT team is small by design. Most of the development work happens through external partners, with the internal team acting as orchestrators and architects for the business. That model works best when one partner can hold the whole picture and act on it. Tornator wanted that partner.

Cloud2 was invited alongside other suppliers to make the case.

Why Cloud2

The engagement began with a structured review of Tornator’s cloud environment. AWS funds these reviews for qualified partners, so the work can begin before any commercial commitment. Over a matter of hours and days, Cloud2 assessed the environment, identified the priorities, and returned a clear, prioritised list of what to address and in what order.

For Tornator, that output was more than a report. It was evidence that the partner could see the bigger picture and act on it. After a few initial meetings the fit became clear. Tornator wanted a supplier who could think ahead, not one who came back for direction at every turn.

“A good outsourced partner is more than an extra pair of hands. It is providing solutions that work well in the long run and benefits the customer. With Tornator we have worked from that assumption from day one, and it shows in how the partnership has developed.”

Tuomo Tomperi, Cloud2

The Solution: building the foundation, then building on it

The work unfolded in layers, planned together at the start and adjusted as both teams learned what worked. Cloud2 began by agreeing the rules of the game with Tornator: how the cloud environment should be structured, who owns what, and what standards every new system must meet. With the rules in place, the team built a reusable blueprint. Every new service now starts from the same reliable baseline, instead of being built from scratch each time.

With the frame in place, the visible work began. Safety rules were put directly into the environment. Services can no longer be deployed in regions outside the approved European area, and new databases are encrypted by default. The IT team no longer has to police these things after the fact. The environment itself enforces them.

In parallel, the team consolidated Tornator’s network. The network had grown organically over time across several suppliers, and the moment had come to bring it under one design. Tornator and Cloud2 mapped the existing setup together, agreed the target architecture, and drove the consolidation through on a tight schedule. The work was completed in roughly two months, and the consolidated network now serves as the reliable backbone the business runs on.

More recently, the partnership has moved into AI-assisted development. Rather than building every new piece of infrastructure by hand, Tornator’s team now uses AI to produce most of the work automatically. Engineers review and approve before anything goes live. The result is a pace of delivery several times faster than before, and a way of working a small team can actually sustain.

“Work that used to take a few engineers a few days now happens three to five times faster. When AI is helping generate the code, the jump is even bigger. A small IT team can now deliver at a scale that would have needed a much bigger operation a year ago.”

Marko Helenius, Cloud2

Alongside the technical work, Tornator and Cloud2 reshaped how the IT team serves the rest of the business. Common building blocks, such as secure connections, deployment routines, and security controls, are now available for product teams to use themselves. That shifts the IT team’s role from executing every request to running a platform others can build on. The change was as much a conversation about operating model as it was a technical project, and Tornator’s team led the thinking on what the new model should look like.

Results: what a small team can now do

Three outcomes stand out.

Rules that actually apply. Tornator can now set a rule at the top of the organisation and know it takes effect everywhere underneath it. The standard blueprints, the safety rules, and the security controls are built into the environment itself, so every new system follows them automatically. There is no longer a gap between what the policy says and what is actually happening in production.

Security fit for the kind of data the business handles. Tornator operates in a sector where personal data and operational information need to be handled carefully. What had grown over time as a set of different tools and manual checks is now a single, coherent setup. Issues surface in one place, and the information flows into the tools the security team already uses.

Speed that changes what is possible. Work that used to take days now moves in hours. When AI helps produce the code, the jump is larger still. The practical effect is that Tornator’s small IT team now has the leverage of a much larger one, and the business is no longer waiting on cloud capacity to pursue its plans.

A partnership built for the long run

What has made the Tornator engagement work is the way the two teams have chosen to operate together. Cloud2 is an advisor as much as an executor. Tornator brings deep business context, clear expectations, and a willingness to engage on the substance. Both sides talk openly about how the partnership runs and what each is responsible for. Decisions get made together, and the joint output is what matters.

“We came to Cloud2 with a clear view of where the platform needed to go. What we needed was a partner who could meet that with depth on the architecture and the discipline to execute. The work since has been a genuine partnership — we set the principles and the direction we want the environment to take, Cloud2 brings the engineering and the broader perspective, and the important decisions get made together. That is how a small IT team turns intent into capability.”

Janne Salminen, Tornator Oyj

The relationship today spans both high-level strategy conversations about Tornator’s direction and the business requirements from its cloud operations, and low-level technical discussions with the teams doing the work. It is, in the literal sense, a partnership. Two sides committed to the same outcome, both pulling their weight.