Hi! My name is Mika Sutinen and I work as a Senior Database Administrator for a Finnish company called Tieto. I’ve been with the company from 1998 and most of that time I’ve worked with our healthcare solution, now known as Lifecare. Besides the daily work of administering SQL Server and Windows servers my work also includes the role of a technical architect for some of our biggest customers. In the latter role I am responsible for making sure that our customers have their infrastructure designed and implemented in a way that satisfies the requirements for highly critical healthcare systems.
Besides our customers I also work closely with our product developers, architects and application support specialists. For customer support cases I’m often called to troubleshoot performance issues with both SQL Server databases and software running on Windows operating systems. When working with developers and architects my role is usually to give technical oriented consultation about SQL Server, Windows operating systems and sometimes about our customer infrastructures.
I’ve worked with a wide variety of software and technologies over the years, getting involved with SQL Server has definitely been the most rewarding experience so far. While SQL Server has played it’s part in my work for almost two decades, it was around 2010 when it became my number one interest.
I also blog when ever I find the time to do so. I mostly write about SQL Server and Windows administration, mostly because I find these two subjects tend to go hand in hand and they’re what I know the best. I’m also in Twitter (@SQLFinn)
Skills
I’ve been involved with IT for many years and in several different roles and positions that has helped me to gain a variety of skills.
Primary skills
- SQL Server Administration
- Windows Server Administration
- Windows Clustering
- Windows Troubleshooting
- Performance Monitoring
- Server Hardware
- Customer Support
Secondary skills
- Server Hardware
- Internet Information Services
- Performance Testing
- Virtualization
- Training
- Technical Writing
Training and Certifications
While I firmly believe in learning by doing I’ve also participated to several courses over the years. Other forms of training I’ve participated in include few conferences for database professionals such as PASS Summit and SQLRally Nordic and a good number of PASS virtual chapter sessions. Besides that I do follow a fair amount of SQL Server blogs and discussion forums.
I’ve only listed courses and conferences from the past two years on this page but you can find the complete listing from here.
Conferences and courses
- PASS Summit 2014
- MS Workshop: SQL Server 2012 Advanced Management and Monitoring
- MS Workshop: SQL Server 2012 Features for Administrators
- PASS Summit 2013
- Sovelto: AppFabric Hosting and Caching Services
- Sovelto: Windows Powershell
- MS Workshop: Windows Server: Vital Signs
- MS Workshop: Windows Server: Advanced Troubleshooting
Certifications
- ITIL v3
The work I’ve done
I’ve had the privilege of being involved in many large-scale healthcare IT projects. I’ve listed here the ones that I would consider to be the most challenging ones.
Central Finland Health Care District
I’ve been working with Central Finland Health Care District ever since they started to use our Effica product, I believe this was back in 2005. My responsibility in the delivery project was the design and implementation of the technical infrastructure.
Even more notable project however, would be the combining of multiple (15!) patient record systems to single one back in 2011. It was the first time something like that was ever done and the result was the largest patient record system we had designed and build using our product. In this project my responsibility was to make certain that the customer had necessary infrastructure in place to support the increased amount of users as well as to make sure the copying of patient data could be done as quickly and safely as possible.
APOTTI
This is one of the more recent projects I’ve participated in is the APOTTI project. In this project I was part of the technical team working on designing the technical infrastructure for our solution, my responsibility being the database servers and services.
Monitoring Service
I’m responsible for designing and implementing a monitoring service that we offer to our customers. The proof of concept was done together with the Eastern Finland Health Care District and it’s now being implemented to all our customers. Currently we’re already using it to monitor over 200 servers running patient critical software.
What I enjoy about my work and how I work
I believe that it’s important to continue learning throughout your career and finding ways to improve my skills and knowledge is what I find exciting (though I have to say that sometimes studying while working full-time feels like pure madness!). So when ever I work on something I look for ways to challenge myself and the way we currently do things. This personality trait also makes me prone to accepting new and difficult tasks rather easily.
As for working environment, for that I have no real preference. I’m equally comfortable working alone, with co-worker or part of a team. I also don’t mind working directly with customers, in fact, early on my career most of my work was done on-site with the customers. While most of the work these days can be done remotely it’s occasionally nice to meet some of the customers who you go way back with and reminisce about the long days and often also nights working together.
I’ve also received lot of positive feedback from my former and current colleagues and managers, some of that feedback can be found from my LinkedIn profile.
