Merry Christmas 2020

We are taking the upcoming Christmas holidays and the turn of the year as an opportunity to thank you for an eventful 2020. We would also like to give you an insight into how we have dealt with the coronavirus pandemic and what exciting tasks await us in 2021.

It became clear quite early on that a lockdown and the resulting short-time working for many of our customers would have an impact on our capacity utilization. Fortunately, we were spared project cancellations, but not postponements and a significant reduction in daily business. We took advantage of the time we gained and devoted ourselves to a number of optimizations and technical debts that had accumulated. You will find out more about this later.

After the first lockdown, which also began at arocom with the entire team working from home, we are now working in two groups, some back in the office and some continuing to work from home. Our processes and IT landscape allow us to adapt dynamically to new official requirements without restricting service provision and availability. In the medium term, however, this way of working will also change the way we work together, both as a team and in personal contact with customers.

We have noticed that new approaches are needed, especially for working together. The changes introduced at short notice in an exceptional situation must be transferred in such a way that the new form of cooperation has a lasting positive effect on the team structure and corporate culture.

We observe how other companies master the associated challenges and learn from the exchange of shared experiences. This gives us the confidence that this year will make us stronger again and that past experiences will enrich us.

Now, towards the end of the year, the tide has turned again and we are noticing that many companies and organizations are slowly picking up again. We are also seeing a number of new projects and project takeovers. The focus is now increasingly on digitally supported business models. Digitalization & (digital) globalization is picking up speed again!

Reinforcement for our team - including editorial staff

The challenges that 2020 brought did not stop us from looking for reinforcements for our team. In July, Niclas Timm joined us as a junior developer with a background in business administration. In December, we welcomed Valentina Mayer, who has a degree in computer linguistics, and from January we are looking forward to welcoming Michael Maier, an experienced online journalist. This is our response to increased requests for SEO-optimized content production. If you too have less and less time for content maintenance in your day-to-day business, we look forward to supporting you. Three new colleagues and a new service for our customers!

We are very happy about the new dynamic and the breath of fresh air that our new additions bring to our (digital) office.

2020 - Optimizations + more

Deadlines, budget limits and other framework conditions are necessary in everyday project life, but they are not always in line with the highest quality standards and the technically best and cleanest solution. This year, we have decided to use the time we have gained through project postponements to your and our benefit. Technical legacy issues were cleared up, quality improved enormously and we learned a lot for future projects.

So what have we done?

1. Standardization of the code base of Drupal 8 installations, free back- and crossporting of bugfixes
2. Free preparation for Drupal 9 for all Drupal 8 customers
3. Free migration of all still required Drupal 8 commands to Drupal 10 (which are required for Drupal 9)
4. Update of the monitoring system, which now also uses Drush 10, plus the addition of further tests
5. Expansion of the automated server deployment infrastructure
6. Extensive expansion of the DrupalVM/Docker fork, for 1) Use of Node.js projects 2) Support of remote workstations 3) Integrated quality control 4) Ensuring that old Drupal 7 projects can continue to be operated by arocom.
7. Moving and consolidating redirects to higher architecture levels, in our case to Haproxy => performance
8. Updating the entire tech stack to the latest software versions

In addition to eliminating these technical debts and preparing for Drupal 9, we have also worked intensively on the Drupal Layout Builder as a completely new interface for operating the websites we have developed. arocom now has a fully functional demo installation including content revisions, translation workflows and a large number of extensions. The remarkable thing is that we have succeeded in carrying out a partially automated conversion from Paragraphs to Layout Builder. This opens up the possibility of upgrading even "old" Drupal 8 projects to the new UX and providing all Drupal 8 users with a completely new, intuitive and much simpler working environment.

Stay positive, proactive & productive

As you can see, 2020 was a very exciting year despite, with or even because of coronavirus. Without your support, we would not have been able to slide into 2021 so strongly. We would like to thank you once again. We appreciate every day what we have in you, our customers, colleagues, partners and friends.

Now it's time to use the festive days to relax and then start the next year in a positive, proactive and productive way. Hopefully the official regulations will then allow us to enjoy a coffee together from our new coffee machine and be together in person again. A pleasure for the palate and soul, because there's nothing like friendly contact with one another.

Until then, we will remain at a respectful distance, but no less attentive, and wish you, your colleagues, employees and families a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Your arocom team

PS: This year, we are foregoing gifts and greeting cards in favor of another donation to aventerra e.V. The organization offers adventure-based educational programs for children, which are anything but easy, especially this year. ... and yet so important!