Matkahuolto is a Finnish mobility and logistics company with more than 90 years of history. Its travel services run almost entirely as a digital business, and its parcel services depend on integrations working reliably behind the scenes.
"Integration, above all APIs, are big and high volume, so they're essential," said Petri Luurila, who leads Matkahuolto's technology unit. "When you have to say that the business can't tolerate them being down at all, the same of course applies to the ticket shops."
For years that integration layer ran on Mulesoft. The setup worked, but the pricing model did not match the business. "It was quite a rigid pricing model, set up according to the season, which is a problem for us on the parcel side," Luurila said.
Roughly half of Matkahuolto's annual parcel volume lands in the fourth quarter, and the team was dependent a small group of named consultants regardless of how busy that quarter was. "It was a setup that didn't scale. It was challenging if someone was absent and so on," he said.
A migration that made business sense
Luurila had bought Frends twice before, at two previous employers, which made it a familiar option once Matkahuolto started looking for an alternative.
Cost efficiency, ease of use and a move away from named-consultant dependency mattered, along with a 24/7 maintenance requirement to match a business running around the clock. Matkahuolto had already set a "Microsoft first" architecture policy and was consolidating its Salesforce-ecosystem tools, Mulesoft included.
The commercial terms sealed the decision. The offer was hard to beat particularly when one cost was calculated: "Our payback time was under a year for that project," Luurila said.
The migration itself moved the integration layer over largely as is, using documentation inherited from the previous partner.
According to Mikael Suvanto, integration architect at Matkahuolto: "The progress had a clear and logical structure. We started with training sessions and a walkthrough of the current architecture, which gave us a good foundation for the actual migration work."
The team also spent time learning the previous platform where needed, and a project manager kept the schedule under control from the start.
The project stayed on budget and as scheduled
Luurila described the result as close to ideal for a project of its size.
We stayed on budget, stayed on schedule, everything went as agreed, so there's actually fairly little for a steering group to do, and nothing to complain about.
Petri Luurila, CIO at Matkahuolto
He noted the project ran without a single change request, something Frends' own team found notable given the scale involved.
Suvanto pointed to the platform itself as part of why the work moved quickly: "The Frends platform proved to be lightweight in terms of usability and easy to pick up, and the speed of deployments in particular made an impression."
The integration architect also credited having Frends expertise available across architecture, integration development, networking, information security and the API Portal, so questions got answered without progress stalling on individual bottlenecks.
The team also used AI during the migration, in mappings, in understanding the previous platform's mapping language, and in resolving error situations.
"AI brought additional efficiency to the work and sped up the migration itself," said Mikael Suvanto, integration architect at Matkahuolto
Going from migration to expansion and MCP capabilities
Matkahuolto now runs a large number of APIs through Frends, along with SFTP and internal and external database connections.
API management and the API Portal support how partners and online retailers connect: a simple, largely self-service process for small online stores, with more customization available for larger ones. Some legacy interfaces, including the original pickup point search, are still being migrated over on the roadmap.
The team’s focus is now shifting from a migration project to an expansion one. Suvanto put it this way: "The next goal is to continue using Frends as part of our integration development and to put what we've learned into practice more broadly as well. The platform provides a good foundation for this: the work is fast, clear for developers, and using AI adds a further dimension to developing and maintaining integrations."
Luurila is watching AI and agentic capabilities with interest and sees potential in the Enterprise MCP solution for easily reaching older backend systems.
When asked for advice to other organizations considering a switch, the CIO said: "Frends is, compared to those, much more agile and cost-efficient. And it certainly won't lose on technology."
