Prakticum

About Prakticum

Prakticum Vocational Institute is the only Swedish-language vocational school in the Helsinki metropolitan area, offering training in various sectors for both young people and adults. With campuses in Helsinki and Porvoo, Prakticum serves about 1,250 students.

The Challenge

Prakticum, a Swedish-language secondary vocational institution with campuses in Helsinki and Porvoo, faced significant operational challenges due to its aging data center. With a team of only five IT staff members and a growing need for modern, scalable, and secure infrastructure, Prakticum had to decide between modernizing its on-premises data center or moving its operations to the cloud.

As a smaller organization, Prakticum struggled with limited resources and the need to deliver high-quality services comparable to larger institutions.

“Our data center was getting old, and we needed to find a solution – either modernize it or move everything to the cloud. We wanted to level the playing field with other institutions and needed a cost-effective, scalable, and secure environment.”

Olli Zha, IT Manager, Prakticum

Our Solution

Prakticum partnered with Cloud2, following a recommendation from Microsoft. Cloud2 provided a comprehensive solution that included:

• Cloud Governance Model: Established policies and best practices
• Landing Zone: Secure foundation for Azure workloads
• Azure Migration: Migrated servers from existing data center to Azure
• Azure Virtual Desktop: Providing students with powerful virtual desktops capable of running demanding applications
• Continuous Consultation: Ongoing support and optimization

“Cloud2 came highly recommended by Microsoft, and our collaboration with them has been fantastic. They helped us every step of the way, from planning the migration to setting up Azure Virtual Desktop for our students.”

Olli Zha, IT Manager, Prakticum

Results

The migration to Azure has brought numerous benefits to Prakticum. One of the biggest advantages is the improved security - the attack surface has been halved, as they only need to secure the cloud environment now.

Prakticum has seen a significant reduction in costs due to the optimized cloud services - they save a lot during summer and Christmas breaks. Many maintenance tasks are gone, and the team can focus on system development.

Each student receives a device that becomes extremely capable through Azure Virtual Desktop. Prakticum has also built a modern data warehouse on Azure, transforming its approach to organizational management.

The migration project was completed within a few months, stayed on budget, and left a positive impression.

“One of the biggest advantages is the improved security. Our attack surface has in a sense been halved. This spring, there were many vulnerability threats in various software and firewalls, and it’s reassuring to know our risks are lower.”

Olli Zha, IT Manager, Prakticum