Between a 30-year-old VW T3 and a 30-year-old COMOS installation lies less than you might think. This is where I write about what they have in common — and what industrial IT could learn from honest mechanics.
A 1.6-litre swirl-chamber diesel runs no software. Still, it has explained legacy systems to me more clearly than three migration projects with proper consultant preparation. On the dignity of old substance, the habit of repair, and why industrial IT so often discards the wrong thing.
In a Bus, you know what's under the bonnet. In a cloud platform, you mostly don't. On the underrated virtue of running things yourself — and why „managed service" in industry often means the opposite of control.
Keep a T3 on the road long enough and you learn: „still running" is not a state, it's a practice. The same goes for any COMOS database that has been growing since the 90s. On substance, the seduction of the big bang, and the honest migration that ends boringly.