An Independent Consultant from March 1st 2007

February 1st, 2007 by Mark Rittman

Well, this is something I’ve thought about for a while now and now I can mention officially: from March 1st 2007, I’ll be setting up my own company and working as an Independent Consultant, specializing in Oracle Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing solutions. My objective going forward is to provide expert-level consultancy, training, mentoring and writing on the range of business intelligence & data warehousing technologies within the Oracle world.

It’s with a heavy heart that I leave SolStonePlus; it’s not been an easy decision to make and I’ll leave some good friends and colleagues behind. The opportunities I’ve experienced, with some excellent customers and projects over the years have been fantastic but for me now, I felt it was time to move on and work with some new opportunities. I’m leaving SolStonePlus with the board’s blessing and if you’re an existing customer of mine or the company’s, and you want to work with me in future, just drop them a line and they’ll call me back in on a contract basis to work with you.

For myself though, I’ll be looking to work closely with customers and partners looking to get the most out of Oracle’s ETL (Warehouse Builder, Data Integrator), OLAP, Query tools (Discoverer, Answers, Dashboards) and platforms (BI Standard Edition, BI Enterprise Edition, Database, Application Server) and if you’re interested in working directly with me after March 1st 2007 on a consultancy, development, training or mentoring basis, just send me an email at mark@rittman.net; my rates will be quite reasonable and I’m keen to get moving on some engagements in the first few months.

In the meantime, my thanks to Graham, Keith, Mick and the team at SolStonePlus for letting me put this notice up in advance of me leaving, and I look forward to working with both existing and new customers going in to the future.

If anyone wants any more details or would like to discuss possible engagements post March 1st 2007, just drop me a line at mark@rittman.net or give me a call on +44 7866 568246.

Comments

  1. Paul Vallee Says:

    Congratulations and good luck, Mark. I’ll be on the lookout for opportunities to work together.

    Cheers and best wishes,
    Paul

  2. Lisa Dobson Says:

    Was it something I said??

    Seriously, Good Luck with this Mark.

    I’ve really enjoyed working with you these past few months, and I’m sure you’ll do well.

    Lisa.

  3. Patrick Wolf Says:

    Mark, good luck with your new business!

    Patrick
    Check out my APEX-blog: http://inside-apex.blogspot.com

  4. Chris Webb Says:

    Good luck, although I’m sure you won’t need it!

    And if you ever want to come over to the dark side, well, I’ll be only too happy to introduce you to the joys of Microsoft BI ;-)

  5. russ proudman Says:

    Congratulations Mark. I’m sure you’ll be happy in the consultancy field.

    Russ

  6. David Aldridge Says:

    “my rates will be quite reasonable ”

    Tsh tsh tsh … it’s a shame to have made such an elementary mistake so early on — I trust that there’s a big “… for the quality of expertise provided” caveat attached to that. ;)
    Good luck, and don’t let the tax man get you down!

  7. Nilesh Says:

    Hi Mark,
    Congratulations on your decision and all the best wishes! I too made the jump last year from Oracle and have started my own software company. Also doing Independent consulting since Jan of this year.

    Best luck
    Nilesh
    http://www.appsbi.com

  8. Doug Burns Says:

    Best of luck, Mark, although I think talent will win out.

    Cheers,

    Doug

  9. Jeff Moss Says:

    Good luck our kid - you’ll go far!

  10. mark Says:

    Thanks everyone for the best wishes (and yes Lisa, it was something you said…) Hopefully within a few months I’ll be doing a bit of consulting and training for some new clients, rather than going through the bins outside my own office looking for left-over sandwitches.

    Joking apart, I’m pretty confident it’ll work out actually, and as Paul Vallee mentioned, it’d be good to do some work with other partners and suppliers if they want help with OWB, Disco or the rest of the BI tools.

    cheers

    Mark

  11. BVL Narayana Says:

    best wishes mark on your new journey .. by the way what are u naming new company ?

    cheers
    Narayana

  12. Jules Says:

    Break a leg.

    Herr Flick

  13. vidya Says:

    Mark,

    Congratulations and Good Luck!

  14. Scott Gruber Says:

    “my rates will be quite reasonable”

    Reasonable is of course a relative term!

    Good luck
    Scott

  15. Prasad Pallapothu Says:

    It’s real pleasure working with you. You will be missed certainly.

    Wish you good luck and do keep in touch.

  16. Richard Phipps Says:

    Good luck with this.

    I have a lot of respect for what you do and your involvement with getting people into data warehousing on Oracle, our office at Nottinghamshire County Council has your signature framed on UKOUG paper , it is next to Tom Kytes signature !

  17. joel garry Says:

    Good luck, and be sure to work in down time for its value-add in the new paradigm!

  18. Maddy Says:

    Congratulations! I made the same decision and will be heading out on my own as a web designer on March 1st as well! Kudos!

  19. Atul Kumar Says:

    Congratulations Mark. I am also moving to Independent Consulting to explore more . Good luck for your New Role

    Atul
    http://becomeAppsDBA.blogSpot.com

  20. Kehinde Eseyin Says:

    Mark, Congrats!
    Great move!

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