Adapting to a New Environment

In the beginning of 2014, Finnish hosting company Louhi Networks began recognizing that with the insurgence of global cloud service providers into the local hosting scene, hosting companies would be forced to adapt and re-position their offering or face the prospect of being out-priced and over-run. Companies like Google and Amazon with cloud and AWS servers were making hosting purchases and server setup leaps and bounds easier than ever before. Not to mention scalability, automation and cost effectiveness compared to traditional environments. 

As part of a 5 year contract with Pilvi, Louhi Networks worked to improve their digital offering with a new online sales channel enabling a new way to sell all of their product offering through one fully centralized place. With the change their customers can order Domains, Webshops, Virtual Servers, and products from Amazon AWS, F-Secure, Google, Microsoft, Softlayer, alongside their own offering and customer service support.


Louhi represented an early adapter in the hosting field, having recognized the need for change and adaptability in the coming market. Through careful strategizing they chose to implement a self-service model. By automating much of their sales and adding to their offering by reselling some of the most  sought after hosting solutions at the time they were able to relieve much of the pressure from traditional field sales, and expand their product portfolio exponentially.

At the time of implementation they set goals of growing their online sales by 20%, now after the first year of use these goals have been reached. At best same month sales jumped by nearly 50% in comparison to their prior solution. They’ve now been able to set further goals in again expanding their product portfolio from the current around 100 to 500 products in 2019, including many SaaS solutions that fulfill modern working environment needs.

Through these changes they were able to position themselves to become a broker of the most sought after global cloud service products, and create a marketplace where new products for resale can be easily added on to. They have not completely abandoned what they do best either, with the influx of new tech and services people will need support in how best to use them. That is why Louhi has been able to keep their customer support team at the forefront while become a virtual one-stop-shop for  all of a new business’s needs.

What is self evident, is that a change will always be on the way, often times people resist and fight change, when embracing and adapting could more often than not be the best course of action. Louhi was able to bravely do this, perhaps you in your own business should look in to the same.

“The experts at Pilvi had an excellent understanding of eCommerce as well as deep knowledge of the hosting business and our individual needs. This new webshop is a huge step forward for us. Of particular interest is bringing large international cloud services while offering our local Finnish support, we believe this will be of great interest to our customers as well.”

Says Mikael Kääriäinen of Louhi.

Written by:

Pilvi Cloud Company

 Visit:

The Louhi Store to see more.

Stumbling Out of the Blocks


I’ve been conducting sales with Pilvi for the past half a year now, and everything has gone pretty well. The basis being, we have found a Product/Market fit, and the extent and content of our message has resonated fairly well for many SaaS companies. However, there has been some sluggishness out of the gates.

I’ll attempt to keep this piece positive, but I need to raise an issue come across all too often, time or the lack thereof. Being too busy to do everything but the things that would help make you less busy. Being too busy walking, and having no time to buy a bike.


People tend to have many different things keeping themselves busy in their personal lives, and that is not something I am getting into. I am focusing on the matter in a business development sense. So when you are in too much of a hurry to do it all, you have no time to do what really helps the business in an ever-changing world, which results in sluggish growth.

“We are currently so busy selling in the field, (…that we have no time to think about online sales automation.)”

A bike is an investment of course, one that costs money, while your feet are free. And the wear and tear on your shoes only gets noticed once you feel that stabbing pain in your heel.


Change is scary — but e-Commerce of services is already here!

Trade in services (Software, SaaS, IoT) is nearing a big breakthrough. It is the second phase of e-Commerce, web-shops for services. And again just as was the case 20 years ago, when we attempted to bring webshops to chains (“No One buys clothes online, they need to be tried on.”), they are not interested in investing in webshops. There seem to always be grounds for reasoning that the world will not change, or at least we do not need to change with it.

Too often, I seem to hear the following from software companies, at least here in Finland:

“Our product can’t be sold online.”

“Our product requires demonstration, customization, or instruction.”

“We aren’t ready (…as we are busy doing everything else).”


At some point, I cynically thought that it was laziness or a lack of understanding, but I’ve come to realize that these are not the real reasons. The reason seems to lie in strategy, or lack thereof, or a failure to comply. When there is no clear direction, we wander, experiment, tinker, and build.

At this point the proofreader told me to say something positive. Fortunately creating a strategy does not require a miracle. Getting mobilized can begin with reading a good book on the subject, here are a few of my personal favorites:

Crossing the Chasm — Geoffrey Moore

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t — Jim Collins

Blue Ocean Strategy — W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne


And the situation is not entirely bleak. Many are already well on the move, especially young startups that develop their own SaaS product. Here the sales models are created to take place directly online, even if supported by direct sales in the beginning.

Trials and sales automation are a scalable foundation for growth. If a company’s most important strategic objective is not Customer Activation and Sales Automation, it would be worthwhile to go back to the drawing board. A bold statement of course, and while this may not always be the case for everyone, if you are looking for scalable rapid growth this would be the model I would choose. So choose the most effective sales model, and a product which fits it.

As such, if the product can not be sold online, the product needs changing. If it requires presentation, customization, or instruction, then it is too complex and requires simplification — make an MVP you can sell online. If you are not yet ready, stop and think about what all needs to be done, and above all, what can be left undone.

That is how strategies are built, choosing what not to do. In the end the path is as clear as the goal — learn how to ride that bike.

Tapio Talvisalo

-SaaS Enthusiast, Builder of Cloud Castles