Speakers
Antti Siitonen
Senior Manager, Cross Functional – Equinix Northern Growth and Emerging Markets, EMEA
Antti Siitonen has almost 30 years of experience in IT and communications services with different managerial and directorial positions. Latest eleven years he has been with Equinix and currently he is responsible for developing Equinix Northern European Growth and Emerging Markets in Finland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland on sustainability, standardization, consistency, scalability, and quality of services delivered to customers.
Antti holds a M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Aalto University in Espoo.
Kim Gunnelius
MD, Verne Global Finland
MD Kim joined Ficolo (now Verne Global Finland) full time in 2017 as CCO. In that position, he identified and managed opportunities globally, ranging from Hyperscale and HPC to enterprise, including working with the largest technology companies in the world. He also oversaw the green certification initiatives that helped Verne Global Finland achieve several industry firsts, such as the first Dark Green rated green bond for a data center company as well as the first hyperscale-level, climate neutral certification for a Nordic data center.
Having reached carbon neutrality in 2021, many years ahead of competing companies’ targets, Verne Global Finland is advancing towards a carbon negative, climate-positive operation. Under Kim’s leadership, Verne Global Finland efforts include reusing excess heat into the district heating grid to create a positive handprint in addition to a zero footprint.
With a background in software and telecom, Kim has helped build the financial foundation at Verne Global Finland and define its position as one of the top data centers in Finland and an internationally recognized, sustainable leader in Colocation.
Duke Aschan
Sales Director, atNorth Sweden
Duke joined atNorth in early 2022 as Sales Director to drive atNorth’s sales. Duke’s experience in providing data center solutions to strategically demanding industries has resulted in a deeper understanding of the various legislative, security and practical challenges enterprises face in securing their critical IT workloads which underpin their business commitments. Duke Aschan is a business veteran joining atNorth from Interxion Digital Realty.
Matti Tella
Head of Helsinki Data Center, Telia Oyj
Matti Tella is leading Telia’s Helsinki Data Center that is the biggest open data center in Finland, and a state of the art facility offering co-location, connectivity and infrastructure services to wide range of Finnish and international customers. Matti is in charge of high-quality, certified continuous operations of the mission critical facility since 2018 as well as continuous construction projects to accommodate data center capacity to the growing customer needs.
Matti has almost 30 years of experience in data center, network, and IT infrastructure domains, and before Telia he has been working in international scene in companies such as Nokia, Microsoft, AT&T and Metso. Matti holds a M.Sc. degree in Engineering Physics from Aalto University in Espoo.
Wayne Allen
Sales Director, atNorth US
Wayne has been in the datacenter business for more than 30 years. He was with the founding team at Digital Realty Trust when it became the first publicly listed REIT. He has worked at Dupont Fabros Technology, Vantage datacenters and with international Telcos with datacenter platforms like Colt and PCCW. He joined AtNorth this year to focus on decarbonizing datacenters and utilizing renewable energy sources and focus on datacenter efficiency.
Frej Werner
Principal Program Manager, Datacenter Regional Construction, Microsoft Finland
Frej has background in project and real estate management from big-scale property businesses. Broad experience in construction project management. Sound understanding of property investments, planning procedures and project management. Strong negotiating and influencing skills among authorities, landowners and consultants. Ability to building strong relationships with internal stakeholders and external partners. Proven leadership skills of leading a group of skilled specialists and experts.
Working record includes Finnish and International clients, providing project excellence to some of the world´s leading companies within the sectors of IT, retail and finance as well education and public buildings.
Juha Syrjänen
Director of data center business and operations, Digita Data Center Oy
Juha is currently director of data center business and operations at Digita Data Center Oy. Juha has been working in the relevant ITC companies such as Telia, TietoEVRY, Nokia.
Juha has strong experience in IT, telco, data center, mobile networks business and services management and development. He has background of leading businesses, developing product portfolios and service quality operations, and working and leading different size of teams. Juha has experience working with various strategies, including data centers, to create and deploy them. Juha has been developing business, governance, operations to work with partners and suppliers.
All in all, I have a strong experience.
- Over 25 years telecom/IT technology and customer services business, including data centers.
- Over 12 years in services, product portfolio business management and delivery.
- Over 10 years in people leadership and team management experience.
Teppo Seesto
Quantum Ambassador, IBM
Teppo Seesto has worked last 6 years in IBM as a Quantum Ambassador. He is very keen on how to get quantum computing in real use in the end user’s side. In his role he has worked with industry clients and academia to spread the quantum computing knowledge. During the years Teppo has been speaker in many conferences, been quest lecturer in different universities and interviewed in different medias. In addition to the role as Quantum Ambassador he has over 35 year’s experience in IT industry.
Tomas Rahkonen
Research Director, Distributed Data Centers, Uptime Institute
Tomas Rahkonen is Research Director of Distributed Data Centers at Uptime Institute, where he also delivers sustainability training. Dr. Rahkonen has spent over 25 years in global positions in the telecommunications, mobile communications and data center sectors. He served over 10 years as a chief technical officer, managing the design and delivery of prefab data centers to four continents. He lives in Stockholm and holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Power Systems (KTH) and an M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering (with the final year at TKK Helsinki). Contact: trahkonen(a)uptimeinstitute.com
Sini Merikallio
Veterinarian, Planetary scientist, Doctor of Science (Technology)
Sini Merikallio is a space technology engineer, scientist, and veterinarian with a rich background in research and development. She conducted research on the Martian atmosphere in collaboration with scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her Master’s thesis, focused on the application of solar panels on Mars, was completed during her participation in the Mars Desert Research Station simulation in the Utah desert. After graduating from the Helsinki University of Technology, she joined the European Space Agency’s Technology Center (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, where she analyzed satellite observations of Earth’s plasma environment. Returning to the Finnish Meteorological Institute, she specialized in Earth’s atmosphere and climate change, completing a PhD thesis on computer modeling of light scattering by atmospheric dust particles.
Dr. Merikallio was part of the NASA Curiosity Mars Rover science team and the MetNet Mars lander development team. Moreover, she was deeply involved in pioneering research on the electric solar wind sail (E-sail) propulsion technology. Merikallio gained recognition by winning the “Move an asteroid” competition organized by the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) for her proposal to utilize the Electric Solar Wind Sail in redirecting an Earth-threatening asteroid. In addition to her scientific pursuits, she actively engages in popular science television and radio programs, regularly appearing as a guest on a television science talk show. She has twice applied to become an astronaut in the European Space Agency selections, reaching the top 200 and top 100 out of 8,000 and 23,000 applicants, respectively.
Dr. Merikallio recently followed her passion for animals by pursuing veterinary medicine studies and has been working as a veterinarian since 2018. Currently, she divides her time between the Helsinki University production animal clinic and a private small animal clinic. This allows her to maintain a wide focus and develop skills to be ready for whatever challenges life brings her way.
Jukka Ruusunen
President & CEO, Fingrid Oyj
Jukka Ruusunen is President & CEO of Fingrid Oyj, the national transmission system operator in Finland. He has previously served in various positions at Fortum Power and Heat Oy. Before that he worked at Helsinki University of Technology and Helsinki School of Economics.
Jukka Ruusunen is docent at Aalto University School of Science and Technology, and Aalto University School of Economics. He has served as the chairman of the National Emergency Supply Council since 2018.
Jukka Ruusunen holds a doctoral degree from Helsinki University of Technology.
Karl Rabe
Founder & MD, WoodenDataCenter
Karl Rabe is the Founder of WoodenDataCenter. With WDC he is moving the Data Center Industry in a new Scope3 aware and optimised future!
By replacing steel and concrete with Cross-laminated Timber and mass timber materials his Data Center designs are optimised in all 3 Scopes of Green House Emissions.
Karl Rabe started by running his own Data Centers where he pioneered direct renewable supply for Data Centers by putting Modular Data Centers in wind farms and heat reuse by running algae greenhouses next to the data center.
His vast experience in operating data centres enabled WDC to design and build highly efficient and sustainable modular Data Centers and wooden Server racks for other Data Center operators.
Karl Rabe co-leads the Modular Data Center group at the Open Compute Foundation and is a Leader in Residence at the Lancaster University Management School.
All his efforts in business, teaching and open community work revolve around improving existing technologies to contribute to the Paris Climate goals and create a sustainable future.
Janne Kalliola
CGO, Exove Oy
Janne Kalliola is the founder and Chief Growth Officer of Exove. He has been coding from 1983 onwards and wrote Green Code book at the end of 2022.
As a father of three children, he will do everything he can to ensure that they inherit an inhabitable planet. For this reason, Janne speaks about and works with green and ecofriendly ICT.
Veijo Terho
Chair of the Board, FDCA
Veijo Terho has long career in datacenter business sector and now working in Verne Global as Customer Success Director.
Experiences in Public Sector and private owned companies like Telia, Tieto and Nokia have contained multiple data center projects around Scandinavia to either build or renovate existing data centers in service owner, customer and technical specialist roles. Energy saving and recycling has been close to heart when looking this business sector services.
Veijo has been a member of FDCA Board for several years and is working sas the chairman of the FDCA Board.
Mikko Aho
Board Member, FDCA
Mikko is a data center professional who has been working in the industry for more than 10 years. Recently he has been focusing to the Edge development and also to the improvement of the energy efficiency in data centers and specially the heat recovery from the DC facilities to surrounding ecosystems. Mikko is leading the Rittal IT sales and solutions department in Finland and is also a board member in the Finnish Data Center Association and Chairman of the Finnish ISO standardization working group for resource efficient data centers.
Reidar Wasenius
Author, Educator, Business Developer
Reidar Wasenius is one of the top speakers and moderators in Finland. He is an experienced professional in communications and business development. He has been working in the tech sector since 1984 and his past employers include Samsung,
Nokia (twice), Digital Equipment Corporation and the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation TEKES (now: Business Finland).
Reidar was the Managing Director of the Finnish Business Angels Network (FiBAN) 2017-2019 and is now the Chief Creative Officer of Breaks Finland Ltd. Reidar has the Finnish voice heard by more people than any other one. It can be heard in telecom operator messages in Finnish phone networks since 1992, in the public announcements on board Finnish trains since 2014 and in the automated telephone services of many government agencies, municipalities and cities throughout Finland.