Hans Kristian Flaatten was the first to enter into cooperation with the Directorate of Fisheries for TietoEVRY. Read more about how it is to work at TietoEVRY.
So it was with great enthusiaism that Hans Kristian embarked on his first project for TietoEVRY: to renew the computer systems – in some cases several generations old – for Norway’s Directorate of Fisheries, which oversees Norway’s fishing and aquaculture industry.
“It was a challenging project,” he admits.
Back in 2017, and just a week into his new role at TietoEVRY, Hans Kristian set off to the Directorate.
The goal was to build a platform for all self-developed applications, from registers, professional systems, and websites, to self-service solutions for users.
“My big idea was to create a modern common platform for over 100 applications so that we could get control of everything. In addition, the platform would need to accommodate new things that come up.”
The solution was to build a container-based platform based on Kubernetes. At the time, Kubernetes was emerging as an important technology, but it was still some way away from being declared the de facto standard in container orchestration software.
“I took a chance on Kubernetes. We also considered Mesos or Docker Swarm, but that was simply because I believed this would be the standard. Luckily, I was right!”
Within six months, Hans Kristian and a small team of developers had turned their pilot project into a full-fledged platform for the directorate. Rather aptly, they named it DockYard.
If you want to take a deep dive into exactly what this entails, you can watch Hans Kristian explain in detail about DockYard in this video from the Booster conference.
“This is a great project,” he says. “We have changed the entire regime for how everything in the Directorate of Fisheries is put into production. From day one and how it is set up, but also that everything should be automated. Today, colleagues Martin Tverråen and Stian Haugland manage the platform.”
DockYard has formed much of the basis for TietoEVRY’s investment in container-based development. An ambitious project started by a new TietoEVRY employee a few years ago has now been taken further in the company, and there are teams working on this in Stavanger, Trondheim, and Bergen.
“Among other things, it has been used in Sparebanken Vest's new mobile bank Bulder Bank, where TietoEVRY is in charge of the cloud, infrastructure, and automation,” says Hans Kristian.
As a strong proponent of the approach, it is not surprising that Hans Kristian wanted the platform to embody a DevOps mindset. Out with waterfalls and silos, and in with agile processes.
“Several organizations have opened their eyes to this, and we are unable to meet the demand. We have now received acceptance for a separate training program for DevOps and containers,” he says.
TietoEVRY is one of the few companies in the Nordic region that has a formalized training program in DevOps, which ends in a DevOps certification in either Azure, AWS or Google Cloud.
Hans Kristian ended up as a DevOps Practice Lead because he himself wanted this role and received acceptance from the closest leaders. When asked if this is typical at TietoEVRY, he nods.
“In the short time I have worked in TietoEVRY, there has been a lot of development within the company. There is room to find out who you want to be or what your area of expertise should be. You get backing to go the way you want, but you must take the steps yourself!”
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Read more and apply nowErik is heading Business Applications within Digital Consulting in Norway. He is also driving a large recruitment initiative for Digital Consulting focus areas in Norway. Check out open career opportunities here .