Software company M-Files receives Millennium Distinction Award
26.10.2015The Technology Academy Finland presented M-Files with the Millennium Distinction Award at the TUT Forum on 22 October. The rapidly growing Tampere-based company develops cutting-edge solutions for enterprise information management and pursues close research collaboration with TUT.
This year the Technology Academy Finland (TAF) honoured experts in the field of big data. The 2015 Millennium Distinction Awards were granted to M-Files and Professor of Physics Sebastiaan van Dijken of Aalto University. The awards were given out during the TUT Forum hosted by Tampere University of Technology (TUT) on Wednesday, 22 October.
Impressive growth rate
The Tampere-based M-Files Corporation has seen rapid growth in the past few years. The company develops document management software, which allows users to find files based on content rather than location. The solution allows any document and information object to be intuitively classified and managed based on “what” it is versus “where” it’s stored.
“M-Files does to file management what iPhone did to listening to music,” said CEO Miika Mäkitalo. “Users can find files and documents in the blink of an eye.”
M-Files is competing against such giants as IBM and Microsoft in the global market but is growing at an impressive rate. The company has more than tripled its revenue to 22 million euros in the past four years. M-Files hit the 300 employee mark this autumn.
The rapid growth rate is keeping the in-house R&D team busy. The company also maintains close research collaboration with Tampere University of Technology (TUT), which offers M-Files access to its specialist expertise.
“Our collaboration focuses not only on R&D challenges but also product management, business activities and quality. They can only be resolved by forward-looking visionaries with cross-disciplinary expertise,” said Veikko Juusola, Vice President of Research & Development at M-Files, in an article published in the latest issue of TUT’s science magazine Interface.
TAF gives out the Millennium Distinction Award in alternate years with the Millennium Technology Prize. The distinction is granted to experts who operate in Finland and whose work is connected to the research field of the winners of the preceding Millennium Technology Prize. In 2014, the Millennium Technology Prize was awarded to Professor Stuart Parkin in recognition of his achievements in multiplying data storage capacity, which paved the way for the emergence of big data.
”With this year’s Millennium Distinction Awards, TAF wishes to pay tribute to the ground-breaking work carried out in Finland in the application field of the preceding Millennium Technology Prize winner”, said Juha Ylä-Jääski, Chairman of the Selection Committee and President and CEO of TAF. ”