A couple of weeks back we had an exciting event in our backyard. Having the privilege of living in the country, we have some land with three stables. For years we have had some great visitors who (completely uninvited) join us for a couple of weeks. You probably guessed it already, a flight of swallows.

Not really being into birds, I am always surprised to see them coming back (assuming that it is always the same pair). More importantly, they don’t only come to visit us, but they also enrich us with a nest from which they hatch eggs. The chicks started to break out of their eggs in the beginning of June and recently left the building.
This year the swallows changed their tradition and did something remarkable; they leveraged the nest they had used last year. Initially we always saw new nests popping up, but this year they took last year’s nest, renovated it and when they were satisfied, used it to lay their eggs.

Observing this new behavior of the swallows got me thinking about the system landscapes of our customers. In a lot of discussions when we talk about the future or digitizing the company strategy, we think about landscape renewal. New processes, new applications, whilst a lot of quality is still in the processes we defined in the past and the applications we have run for years.

Can we learn something from the swallows? How can we leverage the good from the past and bring it to the capabilities of tomorrow so we can put our own eggs into safe (controlled) hands. The Cloud could be an alternative way. Currently we are involved in different programs where we help customers transfer their first and second tier landscape towards PaaS services, leveraging the capabilities of Cloud environments like Pivotal Cloudfoundry, IBM Bluemix, Salesforce etc.
It enables a quick rebuild towards future proof platforms while reducing maintenance costs, upgrade risks, etc. Furthermore it provides innovation on top of a proven foundation, rather than entering complete rebuilds.

The swallows brought new life and energy in the world in a fast, proven and efficient way. Use their example and create your own freedom in order to spread your wings to fly into the new digital world!

As published on Capgemini’s CTO blog