Centria AMK: University of Applied Sciences
Centria University of Applied Sciences is a major educational institution in Finland with extensive research and development operations. They have around 300 staff, including employees and teachers. More than half are involved in R&D, implementing projects with organizations across various sectors.
Challenges They Faced
Centria's R&D department needed a platform for developing AI projects—both to manage internal projects and to provide solutions for customers. This required a secure, closed-loop system for handling sensitive data while supporting diverse project requirements that scale across sectors.
Because Centria collaborates with companies that generate time-series data, the system needed to handle this modality as well as other data types they may encounter in the future.
Why They Chose ConfidentialMind
Centria was excited about our generative AI infrastructure platform, especially because it is designed for on-premises, closed-loop deployments. Their primary use was to integrate the platform with their own infrastructure to develop generative AI applications.
They valued built-in database deployments and user authentication, and recognized that many of their customers were asking how to run AI systems in their own environments, making ConfidentialMind Platform particularly appealing.
What the ConfidentialMind Platform Solves
ConfidentialMind Platform addresses Centria's key requirements by providing a comprehensive stack to run any containerized workload on a Kubernetes cluster.
Key capabilities include:
- Multi-team support to align with their organization structure.
- Flexible resource management (e.g., GPU limits aligned with current infrastructure).
- The ability to pause/stop running models to free capacity and schedule workloads as needed.
- Support for different open-source LLMs (e.g., from Hugging Face).
- Running an external image registry outside of the stack when desired.
Together, these features deliver a complete AI system Centria needed—with the freedom to build what they want and connect to any data.
“Centria is adopting ConfidentialMind's platform to enhance project planning by securely managing sensitive data, ensuring robust compliance with data protection standards,” says Tomi Pitkäaho, RDI Manager for Centria's Production Technology Team. “The platform provides a centralized framework to systematically document and showcase Centria's expertise, enabling clear, data-driven communication of capabilities. This strategic approach strengthens Centria's networking capability and positions it as a trusted and innovative partner within its stakeholder ecosystem.”
Conclusion
The partnership with Centria demonstrates ConfidentialMind Platform’s ability to support diverse generative AI initiatives in education and research. Their development team was particularly enthusiastic, noting: “We already have some LLM-based projects and are very keen to start using your product.”
The successful implementation has opened doors for expansion—for example, Centria sees potential for the platform to be used by many more users across various projects.