From Technology Experts to Entrepreneurs

The shared work history of Cloudriven’s founders goes back to a time long before the company’s establishment. After the turn of the millennium, their career paths converged at Quartal Content Management Ltd., where they worked in Microsoft technology consulting and software delivery. Their expertise in many key Microsoft cloud services dates back to their earliest versions, including, for example, SharePoint Portal Server 2001 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 1.0..

Due to corporate mergers, their employer’s name changed first to Satama Interactive and later to Trainers’ House Plc. Along the way, the founders began to question the meaningfulness of customized project deliveries based on Microsoft platforms. This led to the development of platform-extending products aimed at speeding up implementation times, thus enabling customers to enjoy the benefits of applications more rapidly. Among these products was the first (according to our research) productized social intranet ever built on SharePoint, named Sydän, which brought Enterprise 2.0 concepts into corporate SharePoint intranets. Also among these products was BLARP, a sales management system which accelerated sales digitalization by means of business live-action role play, built by extending Dynamics CRM.

As cloud technologies matured, the founders saw an opportunity to focus on developing a B2B SaaS service for international markets as an independent company. After business transactions, Cloudriven was founded in 2012 by the four founders, and they set out to find an idea that would allow them to conquer international arenas.

Establishing Operations and Developing Product Business

During the company’s first years, in addition to searching for scalable application ideas, the focus was on consolidating operations and building strong customer relationships. The company quickly grew to employ slightly over a dozen people and ensuring customer satisfaction became a key guiding principle in its operations.

Several application ideas, totaling over a dozen, were productized and tested in the markets. Some of these ideas proved viable for business, although there were occasional misses. For instance, the company developed an application for the Windows 8 operating system that allowed customers who believed in active B2B sales to quickly and easily monitor meeting frequencies and address challenges therein. Similarly, the Call Tracker application, designed for Windows phones, enabled phone calls based on CRM data and automatic logging of the calls into the CRM database as early as 2013.

Eventually, gamified concepts became the core of Cloudriven’s SaaS service business. This gave rise to the TrainEngage platform for supporting motivating learning and change management, as well as Happit for training web-based applications directly within the user interface of the underlying application. Happit was recognized as the Best Office 365 Add-in at the European SharePoint Conference in 2018, and the company also received Microsoft’s ISV Partner of the Year award in Finland.

From Product Business to Expert Services

After the spin-off and incorporation of Happit, Cloudriven decided to focus on developing expert services in the Microsoft cloud at the end of 2018. This decision was driven by our extensive experience in application development, platform configuration, data migration, integrations, and application maintenance within the Microsoft cloud.

The company’s decision was well-received in the market, and the transformation became a success story, particularly in the context of the challenges posed by COVID-19 in 2020. Our revenue grew by over 46%, and our workforce expanded to more than 30 employees, with the new Cloudrivers being among the top experts in their respective fields in Finland and within the broader Microsoft ecosystem.

The story continued into 2021, resulting in a 26.9% increase in revenue. In 2022, growth accelerated to 36.2%, and the workforce reached a milestone of 40 employees.

International Cloudriven

Cloudriven’s expertise is well recognized among our customers. Finland is a forerunner market internationally in deploying Microsoft Cloud services and utilizing their capabilities in business critical solutions. Cloudriven has served international customers both in Finland and abroad successfully. To strengthen its expertise in security-critical environments and accelerate its internationalization, Cloudriven welcomed a new majority owner, the Finnish-based Modirum Group Oü in August 2023. Modirum Group has offices in 15 countries and it delivers solutions for 3-D Secure and tactical command and control needs for finance industry and public sector customers in addition to professional services.