Some IT migrations have a recognizable cost of failure: downtime, frustrated users, delayed timelines. A well-being county's migration carries a different kind of risk entirely. The change cannot affect patient care during the transition in any form.
That single constraint shapes every decision in the KeuSote project our team worked on at Gapps.
Keski-Uudenmaan hyvinvointialue (KeuSote) is the first Finnish well-being county to move from Microsoft to Google. Because no organization had done this before, the team had to design and execute as they went.
"Because KeuSote is the first to make this move, there was no ready-made playbook for every situation," says Erno Koivisto, Strategic Account Executive at Gapps, who has worked in healthcare IT for over a decade. "Some things had to be planned and built along the way."
At the core is a full Google Workspace deployment across the organization: email, calendars, documents, and collaboration tools for thousands of users. Alongside that, KeuSote is replacing end-user devices with ChromeOS machines and shifting device management to the Google platform. A new IAM/IGA solution handles identity and access management. A KASM virtualization solution covers specific application requirements. And Google Cloud is becoming the foundation for modernizing the legacy applications that have run KeuSote's operations for years.
KeuSote's goals were clear from the start: modernize the organization's cloud infrastructure and achieve significant savings on IT costs. By Finnish standards, this is one of the largest Google deployments ever run.
Jyrki Rautio, Senior Project & Change Manager at Gapps, joined the project after it had already started and been interrupted. Expectations needed to be reset, priorities clarified, and the path forward rebuilt while keeping two organizations aligned and a multi-layer implementation moving.
"The hardest thing was jumping into a project already in motion," he says. "Managing expectations was the real challenge at the beginning."
His role is to clear the path so that specialists on both sides can do their work and to ensure that when something blocks progress, it is resolved rather than left to drift.
Gapps has reviewed the architecture alongside KeuSote repeatedly throughout, revisiting decisions when circumstances shifted rather than holding to earlier agreements for the sake of consistency.
"We have been able to have open conversations about even the more difficult choices," Jyrki says. "Our job is to make sure the solutions work now and hold up over time."
One of the parallel workstreams is application modernization, moving legacy applications to Google Cloud so they can be maintained, scaled, and developed going forward.
The standard approach takes eight months. Gapps applied an AI-based method that compressed the timeline to two weeks at a fraction of the cost of an expert, without sacrificing quality.
Eero Koistinen, Sales Executive at Gapps, handled the commercial and delivery side of this work. He traces the result to the trust established with KeuSote before execution began.
"When a customer decides to sign a project with us, that is a signal of trust," he says. "When they see results like this, that trust is confirmed."
In most industries, risk management means protecting systems and business continuity. In healthcare, it means that the migration cannot affect the delivery of patient care in any way.
"The change must not impact KeuSote's core operations," Erno says. "That constraint is taken seriously at every stage."
That constraint shapes how the security layer is designed from the ground up. The architecture combines data classification, DLP controls, and access rights so that visibility is built into the system rather than added afterward. Chrome Enterprise Premium adds device-level protection against accidental and intentional data leakage across desktops and mobile devices. Gemini is integrated so that KeuSote's data stays within its own environment; information stays within the access boundaries defined for each user, even when working with AI tools.
Because no Finnish well-being county had made this move before, some decisions had no precedent. Erno connects the team's ability to navigate that to something specific about how KeuSote itself approaches the project.
"When the customer has a clear direction, goal, and intent, it makes agile working possible even within a large project," he says. "Small things can be tested along the way without those tests pulling the project off course."
A project this complex also requires more than technical execution. Erno highlights the role of everyone involved in making the outcome possible.
"For something like this to work, you need genuine commitment from the client and top-level expertise from everyone on the delivery side," he says.
The moment Jyrki remembers most clearly from KeuSote is not a technical milestone or a deadline met. It is something he noticed happening gradually.
"I realized that everyone involved across both organizations, all the different parties, was pulling in the same direction."
In a project this size, with plan changes that land significant extra work on everyone involved, that alignment is a result of how the work is structured and how Gapps approaches the relationship with the client.
Jyrki puts it plainly: "You get responsibility. You have to be able to carry it. But you are not alone."
KeuSote is Keski-Uudenmaan hyvinvointialue, a well-being county in Finland responsible for healthcare, social services, and eldercare across the region