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Building confidence in EU-based cloud infrastructure for Vitec MV

Vitec MV is a Nordic software company behind the reading and writing support tool IntoWords. Their solution help children, students, and adults with reading and writing challenges by providing accessible, user-friendly digital tools that support learning, inclusion, and participation across education and professional environments throughout the Nordics.

Vitec MV decided to move its cloud infrastructure from a US-based provider to an EU-based alternative to ensure its data was hosted under EU jurisdiction. Their existing setup was already technically sound, but hosting data outside the EU no longer aligned with Vitec MV’s requirements around control and trust.

Migrating infrastructure between cloud providers is a complex process that requires careful planning to avoid disruption and operational risk. To support this transition, Vitec MV worked with Polar Squad to design and implement a new EU-based cloud environment and to improve how their infrastructure was managed going forward.

The main challenge for Vitec MV was ensuring that its data and infrastructure were hosted within the EU. While Vitec MV’s previous cloud provider offered a more mature platform, it was based outside the EU, which no longer aligned with Vitec MV’s requirements.

The motivation for change was not technical. The existing setup worked, but it relied heavily on manual processes and required a level of trust and data residency that Vitec MV was no longer comfortable with. Moving to a different cloud provider meant rebuilding the infrastructure in a new environment while keeping the system stable and predictable throughout the transition.

Vitec MV needed a practical way to migrate its workloads while reducing the operational risk associated with manual infrastructure management.

Polar Squad worked closely with Vitec MV to design and implement the new infrastructure on UpCloud. UpCloud provided the underlying cloud services, while Polar Squad handled the implementation, automation, and migration work.

The infrastructure was built using infrastructure-as-code practices with Terraform. Using UpCloud’s official Terraform support, Polar Squad provisioned the required components, including virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, load balancers, and managed databases such as PostgreSQL.

Before the migration, infrastructure was largely created and maintained manually. This made changes slower, increased the risk of errors, and made it difficult to reproduce environments reliably. Polar Squad addressed this by defining the infrastructure as code, giving Vitec MV a versioned and repeatable setup that can be reused across environments.

In practice, this means the infrastructure can now be recreated by applying code rather than relying on manual steps. This also forms the basis for disaster recovery, allowing new environments to be brought up more quickly if needed. Nothing about the migration was flashy, it just needed to work.

The migration was completed smoothly and within a short timeframe. Vitec MV now runs its infrastructure on an EU-based cloud provider and manages it through code rather than manual configuration.

As a result, Vitec MV has:

Infrastructure hosted within the EU
A repeatable, code-defined setup instead of manual provisioning
Improved reliability compared to the previous approach
A clearer starting point for disaster recovery work

By moving to infrastructure as code, reproducing environments is faster and more predictable, and operational risk caused by manual changes is reduced.

Together, these changes give Vitec MV a more predictable and controllable infrastructure setup that reduces operational risk and is easier to stand behind.

Collaboration

The project was handled through direct and practical collaboration between Vitec MV, Polar Squad, and UpCloud. Communication took place via shared Slack channels, allowing questions and issues to be addressed quickly by the people doing the work.

This setup avoided slow support processes and made it easier to move forward without unnecessary back-and-forth. This way of working helped keep the project focused, avoid delays, and make steady progress without unnecessary friction.