“I am Marko Väätänen, an entrepreneur from Jyväskylä. I graduated as a Master of Science in Energy Technology in 1999 from Lappeenranta University of Technology. Since my graduation, instead of energy technology I have worked in the information technology services sector where my own company also operates. I founded IM Fellows Oy with a former Nokia colleague in 2013.

The thirst for knowledge and desire to learn the basics of new technologies led me to start studying as an adult. I completed Åbo Akademi’s course Cloud computing because I wanted to understand the basics of the topic at the grass roots. In addition, the course seemed very interesting and went through technology-related issues on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

The course met my expectations and the basics of cloud services became familiar to me. The course was very well designed and implemented for the needs of distance learning, and the exercises carried out on the AWS platform were also good.

However, I was missing a broader assignment in which to establish a typical 3-layer server architecture (front-end server, application server, and database as a service) to the cloud and go through the inter-server communication and data transfer opportunities. Perhaps this could be one of the subjects of an even more advanced course.

The course was definitely useful and I was able to apply the lessons learned immediately in my customer projects. At the moment, my own company uses the AWS platform for development and sales purposes.

Last spring, I also completed another course from Åbo Akademi University related to databases through FITech. In addition, at the turn of the year, I completed two FITech courses at my former school LUT University, and a cybersecurity-related course organised by University of Vaasa will begin in March. I think FITech is the best thing for the self-development of employees that has been invented in a while.

I would definitely recommend FITech to all who are motivated to learn new things and technologies alongside work. Investing in yourself and in your own skills contributes to the future!”

What is Amazon Web Services platform?

Cloud services platforms offer elastic computing capacities as a service with a pay-as-you-go pricing. On this course, students use Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a cloud services platform. This allows them to practice in a real-world cloud environment which is also used by companies like Netflix, LinkedIn or Airbnb. For example, they learn how to deploy web and server applications that are able to adapt to a variable number of requests and load.

— Sebastien Lafond, Cloud computing course teacher