December 2023 - Matthew McGiffen Data

In June this year I took redundancy from the company I’d worked at for the previous 11 years. It was of course an uncertain time while I figured out what I wanted to do, having to consider the needs of my family as well as myself.

It was also a great opportunity. For many years I’d toyed with the idea of striking out on my own as an independent data consultant. I’d run my own popular blog on topics around Data architecture and SQL Server for a long time and had recently had a book published on database encryption.

I felt reasonably well known and respected in the larger data community. With a little money in the bank, I decided to go for it.

I haven’t looked back. Clients were slow coming in initially and marketing myself wasn’t my speciality but since then I’ve worked with a number of clients and every one has been an enjoyable and rewarding experience.

I hadn’t realised how much I missed working with clients directly, achieving satisfaction, building trust and relationships.

All of my clients so far have been small to medium enterprises without the resource to have an in-house data specialist. I’ve loved working with them because it’s where I can make the most difference. The majority have also, by random coincidence, been in the education sector, so it’s been great making a difference to organisations that are making a difference to so many young people lives.

I also love working with people to improve their understanding of the issues they face, and empowering them to be able to own things moving forward, rather than being reliant on myself or other consultants every time they have a problem.

Some might say that’s not the best model in terms of generating myself future work, but I strongly believe it is the best model in terms of building a strong relationship based on trust, and I believe it is the best model in terms of providing a high-quality service. I also love helping people reaching those light-bulb moments where suddenly they “get it”.

We’ve worked together on such things as:

Troubleshooting performance
Assessing scalability
Improving security posture – including encryption
Automation
Server migrations
Implementing DevOps
High-availability and disaster recovery
Optimizing database configuration

And the list goes on.

That’s been my last six months and I’m looking forward to the next 12 in a way I wasn’t as an employed individual.

If you have a problem or project where you feel you could benefit from some Data Architecture or SQL Server expertise, then please get in touch. You can check out the sort of services I offer here: