When the board of Gapps asked Vesa Sironen to take on the CEO role in the spring of 2026, he had already held the position twice. Vesa had spent the previous three years in board roles, working at a different pace and from a different angle.
When the board asked him to return again, Vesa could have said no, but he said yes. For him, it felt like coming home.
Vesa has been connected to Gapps for 15 years. In tech, that's unusual, but Vesa has stayed, vacated the operational role twice, and returned as many times. Each time, he names the same three things as the pull: value match, trust, and community.
"Continuous learning and innovation — that just comes naturally and is important to me," he says. "Trust is obviously a very big thing for all of us within Gapps. And then the community. Those are the things that have stayed with me."
These values show up in how people at Gapps work. Gapps helps organizations modernize how they work – from cloud infrastructure and Google Workspace to AI-driven services and long-term IT partnerships. It is the kind of work that asks people to be genuinely good at the technology and clear-eyed about why it matters to the business.
A deliberate kind of fresh start as a third-time CEO
When Vesa returned as CEO of Gapps, he made a conscious decision not to walk in as if he already knew the place. Three years had passed, and the company had changed more than he expected.
"I think it would have been easy to just slip back and think that the company is the same as it was three years ago," he says. "But it's changed a lot."
So instead of acting fast, he read, talked with people, and spent the early months listening. He says it was one of the most important decisions he made: taking time to understand where things stood.
"I'd never want to build a centrally run organization where everything has to come up to the top," he says. "We have a lot of smart people working here who understand what's important for the business. I have a lot of trust in the people and in the organization."
Why We Won Google Cloud Partner of the Year 2025
In 2025, Gapps won Google Cloud Partner of the Year in Finland. For Vesa, it came down to people who are genuinely interested in what they do.
"I'd even go as far as to say that we have quite a few people within Gapps that identify as nerds, myself included," he says. "Being interested in something and becoming good at it through that — that's probably the number one reason that propelled us to where we are now."
The certifications and official recognitions the team has earned back this up. But more than the numbers, it shows up in the daily work. Gapps values technical depth and genuine expertise in leading change, and it attracts people who care enough to build both.
Finland's First Google Well-Being Municipality
Gapps is currently working with the Well-being Services County of Central Uusimaa, Finland's first well-being services county, to move entirely to Google. The company is proud to have been selected for the task.
"That's one of the recent things you couldn't do anywhere else," Vesa says.
These kinds of projects, new, meaningful, technically demanding, come from years of building credibility and trust with clients who are doing genuinely ambitious things. Gapps also works with major Finnish gaming companies, large enterprises, and public-sector organizations, and the range of problems the team addresses is broader than the company's size would suggest.
What growth at Gapps looks like in practice
What excites Vesa most heading into the rest of 2026 is the people.
He talks about a colleague who changed careers a few years ago and joined Gapps in a sales role with no prior background in the field. This year, that person closed their first million-euro deal.
"It's tremendous to see this happening, in the commercial roles, in the technical roles, in the change management roles," Vesa says. "So cool to see people step up to the challenge and win."
Gapps — A Unique Work Environment
In absolute numbers, Gapps is growing faster than ever. New colleagues are joining, new clients are coming in, and the company is organizing itself around bigger ambitions. The change is not always visible in the day-to-day work, but it's happening in how the company structures itself and what it's building toward.
Gapps is deliberately moving from project-based implementations to productized services, managed services, and AI-driven solutions that deliver ongoing value for clients. That direction opens up space for people who want to build something new, shape how services get designed, and work at the edge of what organizations are trying to figure out with technology right now.
"At the bottom of it, it's just about the attitude," he says. "Being interested, being engaged, and kind of willing to be a part of this kind of community that grows and strives for greater things."
Vesa also describes, in practical terms, what a senior professional actually finds at Gapps. No advanced hierarchy. No excessive bureaucracy. Foundational things that work. Smart colleagues who deliver on their promises. Clients who are doing interesting things.
"We say hello in the morning. We have coffee in the kitchen. We pay salaries on time. Our people are super bright and interested in what they do," Vesa says. "And all in all, I think we have a good time together."
It's an unusually plain pitch from a CEO with 15 years in the company and three stints leading it. Vesa has kept choosing Gapps, and that choice is the evidence behind the words. Vesa's closing line on why someone should join Gapps:
"I'd say it's worth a try."
