Datavault demonstrates the value of supporting young people through the success of its former apprentices

Datavault team leader Alex Higgs (left) and Chris Fisher working on the latest release of the award-winning dbtvault software at the Hayling Island based company’s office.

Datavault, based in Hayling Island, is a consultancy business that helps companies store and manage their data.

The business is keen on employing young people who have interests in data and programming and have two of their young team to thank for the success of its tool ‘dbtvault’, which helps companies set up a cloud-based data warehouse.

Datavault took home two awards at The News’ first Innovation Awards last year, picking up Innovative Business of the Year and Digital Innovation of the Year.

The award-winning Datavault team at the Hayling Island based company’s office. Left to right back: Chris Fisher, Samantha Coles and Alex Higgs. Seated: Neil Strange and Mark Otten (right).

Alex Higgs, from Waterlooville, joined Datavault after taking part in a summer placement during his second year at university. After joining the company permanently, Alex was promoted to team leader and said that he is so fortunate that his passion is also his job.

He said: ‘From building computers with Dad, learning to code for the first time, I’ve always been interested in the nitty-gritty of technology – learning along the way, fixing things, and above all being curious about how it all ticks.’

Chris Fisher also joined Datavault after taking part in two placements for the company whilst studying at Portsmouth University. He has worked alongside Alex to develop the dbtvault tool and said that he wishes he had learnt to code earlier.

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He said: ‘Learning to code has opened more career doors than I expected. Going into the data engineering field, having prior knowledge of code was definitely helpful.

‘However, more importantly, I feel problem-solving skills and eagerness to always learn and understand new concepts are more valuable.’

The pair have been working on the latest release of the software and have found that the impacts of the pandemic have brought cybersecurity and data storage to the forefront.

Chris said that winning at the Innovation Awards last November has been a great confidence boost.

Datavault data engineer Chris Fisher, who helped develop the award-winning dbtvault software at the Hayling Island based company’s office.

He said: ‘Winning The News’ awards was such a big shock – but a very welcome surprise. I think all the time we were building dbtvault, we didn’t realise how good it could be.

‘If we had any doubt, winning the awards has been a great confidence boost – and it is also driving us all to push to a higher standard and to improve dbtvault and what we do at Datavault.’

To find out more, visit data-vault.co.uk.