In the fast lane: Key takeaways from Calibo’s ‘Race of the Builders’ hybrid event  

The ‘Race of the Builders’ event crossed the starting line at full throttle yesterday at the Circle Convention Centre in Zurich, Switzerland, and online. 

Our speakers shared many valuable and practical insights in this hybrid event, as we discussed how to accelerate the data and digital building process to achieve digital transformation in enterprises. 

We’ve summarized some of the highlights for you – it was hard to choose as there were so many!  

The importance of internal developer portals 

Adrian Heim, VP of Sales & Marketing at Calibo, welcomed the audience and urged us all to go both fast and far together. He emphasized the importance of internal developer portals, by quoting Gartner’s statistic that by 2026, 75% of organizations will provide internal developer portals to improve developer experience and accelerate product innovation, up from 45% in 2023.   

Then, Loïc Giraud, Chief Operating Officer at Calibo, took the audience through the fascinating evolution of software development. He illustrated how the field has become more agile and collaborative, increasingly reliant on automation, and continually integrates emerging technologies to stay ahead in a fast-paced digital era. 

Giraud likened software and application engineering to navigating a labyrinth, highlighting current challenges such as compartmentalized processes, burdensome ticketing and approvals loops, complex technology stacks, ineffective safeguards, difficulty in onboarding new talent, and too many dependencies leading to limited reproducibility.  

To overcome these, Giraud suggested the creation of an engineering platform that simplifies application development and opens up building opportunities to a broader range of contributors within an organization. 

Most enterprises at the beginning stage of digital maturity  

Key benefits of such a platform include a unified dashboard for all involved users, orchestration and automation across the entire technology stack, self-service access to tools, quick talent integration, and adaptable governance via preset security policies and templates. This streamlines the development process, enhances ease of replication, and reduces maintenance demands. 

In assessing digital maturity (also through an in-event audience poll), Giraud noted that most enterprises in the market are in the beginning stages of their digital transformation journey. 

He offered two scenarios for participants to consider: one where an enterprise establishes a product team and sets up their environment for development, and another where a developed application must be tested and deployed. In both scenarios, the proposed solutions aim to address and simplify the complexities of modern software engineering, propelling companies forward in the digital race. 

Giraud handed the stage to Wylde Marais, Senior Solutions Architect at Calibo, who took the audience through a quick demo of how the Calibo platform can help enterprises save time in their digital product development by automating, orchestrating and enabling self-service functionalities.  

Empowering teams to drive business value efficiently  

In his presentation, “The modern data platform architecture—Is yours current?” Omar Khawaja, the Head of Data and analytics at Givaudan, explored the evolution of data architecture and how businesses can leverage it to create value, reduce risks, and improve their top and bottom lines. Khawaja aimed to delineate how to expedite the flow of business value and empower teams to achieve this flow efficiently. 

He provided a historical overview starting with data warehouses, where a single team used to manage a centralized schema, to the emergence of data lakes in the 2010s, which initially promised easy access to large data volumes but often turned into unmanageable “swamps” due to a lack of ownership, data duplication, and bottlenecks, leaving nobody content.  

With the rise of the modern data stack, Khawaja highlighted that it’s not just about cloud-era technologies but also critical to integrate people and processes. He described the importance of empowering teams and giving them the freedom to do what they want to do. 

Citing Melvin E. Conway’s theory, he emphasized the need for organizational structures to reflect the desired software system design, a concept known as the Inverse Conway Maneuver. Delving into the practical tools for managing this integration, Khawaja introduced Team Topologies, a framework designed to organize business and technology teams for better communication, collaboration, and fast software delivery.  

He subsequently segued into the concept of Data Mesh, introduced by Zhamak Dehghani in 2019. This concept prescribes a shift from centralized to domain-oriented decentralized data management, empowering domain teams through a self-service data platform approach and supporting them with a structured value chain to increase productivity.  

Khawaja encouraged attendees not to get stuck in the old ways, “don’t reinvent the wheel”, but to set this theoretical wheel in motion and start their journey toward reinventing their data architecture for the better. 

To conclude the presentation, the audience received a book recommendation, “Platform Strategies” by Gregor Hohpe, to further their knowledge and inspire future innovations. 

Driving digital innovation at scale in an established industry 

In a thought-provoking discussion on building digital ecosystems within established industries, Romain Apert, Global CIO of Mars Petcare, shared invaluable insights on the transformative journey.  

For instance, he mentioned that enterprises cannot progress CDO and CIO in parallel; it’s ultimately all about driving digital innovation at scale.  

He stressed the importance of taking care of one’s own personal development and remaining curious and humble while mastering one’s domain. Tech leaders, he advised, should shape orders, not merely take them, by adopting a consumer-first mindset.  

When asked about the greatest hurdle in digital transformation, Apert pointed out that the challenge isn’t technological—it’s the premature leap to solutions without fully grasping the problem. True innovation starts with defining the problem through unfiltered customer insights and interactions.  

Leveraging digital, data and analytics to optimize manufacturing and serve more patients 

Dr Martin Sturm, Head of Data, Analytics & Digital at Takeda, showcased the immense potential that data and AI hold in transforming pharma manufacturing. With the complexity of products and the vast data they generate, the right AI tools and high-quality data are pivotal in enhancing productivity and efficiency at scale. He mentioned how the cloud facilitates infinite computer power at an affordable cost. 

Takeda is focused on three strategic shifts: concentrating on high-value cases, prioritizing agility and speed (for example, with teams of no more than ten people), and scaling effectively (by, for example, reusing platforms).  

This requires a commitment to outcome-focused strategies, fostering a digital-savvy culture, and harnessing the power of platform economics.  As a result, connected teams at Takeda now have the power to make data-driven decisions that lead to streamlined, automated operations and, ultimately, the ability to serve more patients.  

At the finish line  

We also had an insightful and fascinating discussion panel on the topics of the future of software and data engineering with Guilherme Martins, Head of Data at FIFA and Pascal Bouquet, Former CTO at data42 and Loïc Giraud, Chief Operating Officer, Calibo. 

What a finish line at our “Race of the Builders” event. After our presentations, we went for some Formula 1 (simulated) racing fun. 

Thanks to everyone who joined both online and in Zurich. We appreciate our speakers’ participation and the audience’s attendance. See you at the next one! 

Want to learn more about Calibo? Talk to us here.