Introducing our new Director of Engineering!
After an incredible 6 months working with amazing customers on incredible problems the time has some to expand our operations and grow. With that in-mind I would like to introduce Simon Whiteley who has taken the position of Director of Engineering and part ownership of Advancing Analytics.
I have worked with Simon for the last 3 years and together we have designed and deployed some the UK's most advanced analytical architectures. Simon is a seasoned cloud solution architect & technical lead with 13+ years of Microsoft Analytics experience. Proven thought leadership in using data engineering to accelerate the return-on-investment of analytics development programmes.
Simon has a wide variety of experience across many verticals in using cloud technologies to drive performance whilst reducing costs. He has pioneered many architectures and frameworks for executing ETL Extract-Transform-Load in the cloud. He has worked with just about every major Azure consumer in the UK.
Pointing you in the right direction!
Simon is very well known in the technical communities, he has spoken all over the world about Microsoft technologies. His blogs are known for their deep, yet understandable content. Simon is the founder and previous organiser of the SQL Surrey user group, he now runs the Microsoft Data User Group in London which has over 1200 members. https://www.meetup.com/Microsoft-Data-London/
Microsoft Data Platform MVP with strong ties to Microsoft engineering teams and a network of deep product experts across the MS Data Platform. He has helped a range of clients transform their analytical operations and gain deeper insights. Simon will help Advancing Analytics continue to grow their engineering capability.
Simon is also a great lover of craft beer, board games and cargo bikes.
At Advancing Analytics, we have focused aims to what we think we do best. Giving advice, delivering advanced architectures and educating. We will continue to expand in these three areas.
Advisory
Areas such as Data Science, Engineering and AI are relatively new fields, and yet they need the same level of senior leadership as any other company. But how do you find senior people in a field that is still emerging and maturing? How do you compare to the rest of your industry? How should you be defining "success" when you're not even sure what "good" looks like?
We're working with clients to help them define their data strategies and uncover any maturity gaps in their current data estate, then guiding them to build out their new analytics capabilities and then working with their fledgling leadership teams to coach and mentor them to success.
Delivery
It's no good just talking about analytics - you need to put it into practice. We've worked with clients across all sectors, designing and building analytical platforms in Microsoft Azure and we have no intention of stopping.
We specialise in two areas - establishing a "Modern Data Warehouse" using efficient, scaleable technologies, and building out Data Science capabilities, preferably building the two together for the most beneficial system. However, we rarely build entire systems ourselves - we prefer to work with our clients to teach their developers new skills, define the patterns and frameworks they can then adopt and tackle the really risky parts of the solution. This means our clients are left with a team that truly understands the platform they're now supporting rather than building reliance on external parties for every change!
Education
Of course, on-the-job training does have it's limitations - if you're starting from absolute zero there's going to be drag on project delivery timescales. As leading experts in delivering systems, Advancing Analytics can also train your teams in a range of cutting edge tools and technologies to get them ready for the next challenge.
Our training is delivered exclusively by our industry experts and we prefer to tailor our courses to each client, meaning you're learning the specific skills you need for the next phases of your project. We're always expanding our training catalogue as we work with new tools, new clients and new challenges - so if there's something you'd like to learn, get in touch and we'll see what we can do!
Data Platform Microsoft MVP & Voice of Data Science in Production You can follow Terry on twitter @SQLShark where he is frequently discussing Data Science in Production.