About Us
About Us
The primary mission of Fail-Safe is to secure our clients' business. We help you to comply with regulations and make your data more beneficial. Our aim is to do this in the most respectful and customer-friendly way as possible – we want to be approachable.
The symbol of our company is a flame. To us it represents not only the passion we feel towards our work and the enlightenment you get from the information we help create, but also warmth and safety.
The Beacon is Lit – Our Story
I set up shop in 2010 with a plan to sell cloud computing, but I ran into issues with acquiring hardware. Because of that the company was left dormant for a year.
At the same time, our first employee Esa and I were using Java to create mods for the game Minecraft. At this point, the infrastructure we needed for our hobby project grew so large that we were able to build commercially viable products.
Later on I was building a game engine based on Doom 3 together with the open source community. I even hired a few graphics design trainees. We ended up only creating a few maps for the game, but we needed something to manage our growing server infrastructure. For this Esa and I developed an automation platform (now ComplianceFrame) and a log collector (now HearthGuard).
Our intent was to focus entirely on game development, but we soon ended up consulting a Finnish financial organization in several IT projects. I managed to sell our previous creations, HearthGuard and ComplianceFrame, for the final assignment. Inspired by the possibilities of HearthGuard, the customer decided to develop an archiving product with me as the software architect. The customer later sold it to us, and it has been further developed into what is now Fail-Safe Archive.
- Mikko Kortelainen, CEO
Who Are We
We are a service company formed by open-source enthusiasts with a background in finance. Our employees are aged between 16 and 64, so we combine the wisdom of age with the passion of youth and everything in between. Here are four of us:
Jakke
ICT-Specialist, Software Developer
I work as a software designer and developer at Fail-Safe, creating new solutions to fit our clients' needs. I also spend a lot of time with our automation products. I am calm, diplomatic, and a good listener.
My background is in fabrication: robot and MIG/MAG/TIG welding, zinc-coating, and CNC machining. I've also worked as a taxi driver. Before Fail-Safe, I helped a machine and tool company grow with the help of a web store, and I built monitoring and other support systems for them. I ended up at Fail-Safe by chance when my friend noticed their job listing. It seemed exciting and diverse, so here we are.
My passion is ignited when I get to to start a completely new project, choose a technology stack for it and knock down problems. To me, it is essential that our product quality stays high and even exceeds expectations. Our products also need to be thoroughly tested for all scenarios.
Vasily
Software Developer
My main task is developing and maintaining the user interfaces of our products. I'm always open for new horizons to conquer. I'm quite good at creating and automating interactions between people and digital systems and I love my job, as it always provides me with creative tasks and challenges to solve.
I am a fast learner. I think it is one of the most important characteristics in IT, as you need to constantly learn a lot so you don't get left behind. During my career at Fail-Safe I've learned a lot of useful practical knowledge about new technologies, IT industry, and software development in general.
Fail-Safe is my first full-time job. I sincerely admire the support our company provides to new employees while they adapt to our workflow. My greatest fear about becoming a part of a soulless company machine vanished once I met my team and realized how friendly and brilliant they are.
I really enjoy it when all my creations work as planned, and I get excited when I see how they become a part of a much larger project. It's like a fitting gears in a complex machine. Of course there's no end to chasing perfection, but Fail-Safe always provides everything I need while I do it.
Niko
Service Delivery Manager
I'm responsible for ensuring that our products and services are deployed to our clients without any hassle. I try to treat all our clients equally and make sure we finish what we've started. As a person, I am trustworthy and open, and it is important to me to be fair in everything I do. Maintaining the trust of our clients is the utmost important thing.
Before I came here I spent 11 years at Nokia Mobile Phones in several roles, ending up as a System Specialist. I was there for the ups and downs, and I was involved in developing remote support services for the Windows Phone platform. Before Nokia, I spent 5 years in an automotive analytics company called Autovista, where I led the ETL development team. I joined Fail-Safe because I was looking for a new direction for my career outside of pure technical development — working as a service manager was an excellent fit.
Working with new things ignites my passion. While working here, I've gotten to learn a lot, approach things from new angles, and find novel solutions to issues.
I'm thrilled when we manage to deliver a particularly challenging solution and our client appreciates it.