For, as Gergő J. Budai, Vantage Towers cluster director for Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Ireland and Portugal, tells us in an exclusive interview, “If, God forbid, something happens, everybody can feel it immediately. After all, it’s critical infrastructure.”
He’s not wrong, but even so, that’s not my favorite quote from our Special Report in this issue. Back in the mid-1980s, I was among the first cohort to sit what was then called computer science at Advanced Level. A coursework element involved writing a program to solve a real-life problem we had encountered. My older brother took one look at my effort and dismissed it as “the worst example of computer programming I have ever seen.”
Similar criticism has been heaped on what banks have felt compelled to do in designing systems where everything is connected to everything else, regardless of age or function, within their legacy networks. It can mean that, like Jenga, when one function falls over, it brings the whole lot down.
“The time of spaghetti architecture is over. Today, we no longer see a network of directly connected systems, but a more complex, fragmented world, and this is what we call architecture salad,” says Márk Hetényi, CEO and founder of R34DY. Using an AI-based platform, he believes his firm has an answer to those problems. It could also benefit other complex systems, such as energy networks. But you’ll have to read the story to find out more.
*****
Another day, another long holiday weekend! There used to be a joke that two days after returning from a break, you needed another one just to get over the effort of going through the backlog of mail (remember that?) and email. Perhaps that’s why this May Day holiday follows so closely on the coattails of the moveable feast that is Easter.
As a kid growing up in semi-rural England, May Day was a spring festival with pagan roots that celebrated the approach of summer. “Bringing in the May” meant collecting greenery and wildflowers to decorate the house or classroom, and I distinctly remember being taught Maypole dances at school.
It was fun, as was the fact that, once I had reached adulthood and employment, it came with a lie-in on a workday. Imagine my horror when we moved from Budapest to Gödöllő and were confronted at 7 a.m. by a brass band being driven um-pa-pa-ing around the streets in one of those road-going fake trains for tourists. It hasn’t appeared in the past couple of years, so perhaps somebody has sabotaged the train. It wasn’t me. Honest.
Although Europe also shares many of these ancient traditions, here in Hungary, like many other members of the Warsaw Pact, May 1 is celebrated as International Workers’ Day, first celebrated in 1898. It grew out of the Second International, which may seem a little, well, socialist to some, and is presumably why our North American readers prefer to call it Labor Day and celebrate it in September.
Whatever you call it, and whatever you celebrate on it, I hope you had a relaxing long weekend.
Robin Marshall
Editor-in-chief
This editorial was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 5, 2025.
Producing journalism that is worthy of the name is a costly business. For over 30 years, the publishers, editors and reporters of the Budapest Business Journal have striven to bring you business news that works, information that you can trust, that is factual, accurate and presented without fear or favor.Newspaper organizations across the globe have struggled to find a business model that allows them to continue to excel, without compromising their ability to perform. Most recently, some have experimented with the idea of involving their most important stakeholders, their readers.
We would like to offer that same opportunity to our readers. We would like to invite you to help us deliver the quality business journalism you require. Hit our Support the BBJ button and you can choose the how much and how often you send us your contributions.
