This was one of the wildest years in recent memory as the whole world was just recovering from being shut inside for 2 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccines were administered around the world in the most comprehensive vaccination campaign in human history, though many businesses continue to work remotely even today.

Shortly thereafter, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed the face of the geo-political world order, leading to swift condemnation from the international community of war crimes, along with bans on Russian oil. Energy shortages as well eventually led to inflation and a rise in global food prices that affected every country in the world.

In March, in more lighthearted news, Will Smith walked on stage and slapped Chris Rock in the face after a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith at the 94th Academy Awards.

The summer brought massive heat waves across Europe, as well as floods and a shocking assassination of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe. In the fall, another world leader left us as Queen Elizabeth II died and was succeeded by her son Charles III.

Now, we head into 2023 with Elon Musk having spent the last few months inexplicably as Twitter’s main character and a more hopeful outlook on how the world can help countries at war and at risk from climate change.

Our achievements in 2022

First, a few updates on business. In 2022, we continued to help amazing brands to grow and scale in digital such as İş Bank, Pegasus Airlines, MetLife, Denizbank, ING Bank, Burgan Bank, Mapfre, BSH, Ferrero, Vakko, and many others. Here are some highlights:

• We signed a strategic business partnership with Burgan Bank to further its vision of becoming the country’s leading digital banking provider. We’ve already started to bring our expertise to Burgan Mobile and ON on their digital transformation journey.
  
• Turkey’s first mobile banking app İşCep celebrated its 15th year! We are delighted to be a part of this success and help İşbank team turn ideas into reality for 15 consecutive years.
  
• We brought home two Altın Örümcek Awards with Pegasus Kiosk project and İşCep.
  
• Together with MetLife, the leading insurance provider, we built MetLife Cepte to easen customers’ life and provide an improved customer experience.
  
• Continuing to grow our cloud capabilities, we had more than 50 new certificates and we have also become an AWS Lambda Delivery Partner and AWS Database Migration Service Delivery Partner.
  
• Our Cloud team implemented the PIM API project for the leading home appliances manufacturer BSH in order to populate product information utilizing a single source of information across all current and future digital touchpoints in a timely and cost-effective manner. The solution we developed with BSH on AWS won two awards.
  

Commencis University

Commencis University refers to a set of training programs designed to help develop the next generation of people working in the industry. First, our Future Commencer internship program, essentially trains computer engineers how to work in the field over a 6 week period. This year it ran from July 5th to September 2nd and helped teach applicants how to be part of a multi-functional team.

Commencis Test Camp ran from October 6th to December 6th, and is a software testing camp for university students looking to take the next step in software testing. Our team of instructors and peers led students through topics including the software development lifecycle, static testing, test techniques, test automation and non-functional testing. Successful students were finally certified by the ISTQB (International Software Testers Qualification Board).

Commencis Cloud Camp held its annual Cloud Camp for the third time in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). 25 university students participated in the free-of-charge 6-week online training program. Over the 6 weeks, they developed their cloud computing skills and got a look into the future of cloud computing technology. Students emerged from the camp ready to begin their careers in the field of Cloud Computing, having acquired the necessary skills and competencies to help them along the way.

Next year’s camp is just around the corner, starting on January 24th and running through March 3rd.

Events

• DevOps Türkiye Online Meetup – “Ideal Pipeline Designs for Sustainable Infrastructure” – January 12, 2022
• METU Design Community – “UX Psychology” – January 14, 2022
• Atılım Uni. – IEEE Student community – Q&A activity – January 22, 2022
• Istanbul Uni. – Computer Engineering Course (We were the guest of the Computer Engineering course for Freshmen and Sophomore students) – March 8, 2022
• ITU Career Summit – March 14, 2022
• Youthall – Women in Engineering Career Summit – March 16, 2022
• AWS Community Day Turkey 2022 – March 26, 2022
• UX İstanbul – April 14, 2022
• Youthall – Digital Tech Career Summit – April 15, 2022
• Koç University – Coffee Break – April 25, 2022
• Bilkent CS Fair – May 13, 2022
• Future in Tech – Google Developer Students Club Galatasaray – May 14, 2022
• ITU Entrepreneurship Club – Failure Week – May 24, 2022
• ITU ACM Club Presentation – May 28, 2022
• YTU – Quality and Efficiency Community –  StarsUp’22 – May 31, 2022
• AWS Commencis Cloud Event – June 14, 2022
• AWS & Commencis MAP Program Breakfast – June 14, 2022
• IT Tech Talks Cross – Platform Technology – September 16, 2022
• Youthall – Back to School – October 07, 2022
• Future of Cloud Summit – October 26, 2022
• Endeavor ScaleUp Summit – October 31, 2022
• METU Career Fair – Novemver 17-18, 2022
• AWS Türkiye Transformation Day – December 06, 2022
• GDG İstanbul Devfest 2022 – December 11, 2022
• YTU Future Booster- Serious Play Logo Workshop – December 21, 2022
• Dream IT – Tofaş Event – December 21, 2022
• BAAL Breakeven 22 Entrepreneurship Summit – December 23, 2022

Commencer Activities

While attending and sponsoring many external events we had happy weekdays with many workshops, art tours, breakfasts & lunches and of course with Commencis Summer Campus.

Commencis Summer Campus

This year, our second Commencis Summer Campus was held in Antalya at the Nirvana Dolce Vita Resort from June 18 to end of September. All employees and their families were invited to join, and worked in the luxury, all-inclusive resort right at one of the most beautiful bays of Antalya, Kemer. Interns and family members as well as employees of Dataroid and Finbyte joined in, with employees continuing to work remotely from the resort in rotations as they enjoyed the weather and beautiful surroundings. Over 500 people attended the Commencis Summer Campus, including family members.

Food for Thought from Commencis Experts

Commencis continued to be absolute experts in the industry, producing 13 reports on the latest trends and the most up-to-date developments in the industry. These reports were supplemented with a number of blogs, insights, and other posts on the latest digital business solutions and trends in technology. This is all in addition to our 10 blog posts and podcasts, where our employees hosted a total of 25 fascinating podcasts on a range of industry-related topics, from design to products to engineering.

New awards & Competencies

It’s no surprise to us, but we’d still like to highlight the awards and recognition we received for all of our hard work and efforts over the course of the year:

AWS Lambda Delivery Partner

All of the learning, knowledge, experience, and success of Commencis’ Cloud team has been validated by becoming an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda partner. Partners like Commencis are certified to help businesses build or migrate solutions to a microservices architecture running on serverless computing.

AWS Database Migration Service Delivery (DMS) Partner

Commencis has been an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Database Migration Service Delivery partner. The Commencis Cloud team has validated its expertise, deep technical knowledge, experience, and proven success in migrating our customers’ databases with this specialization. AWS Database Migration Service Delivery Partners assist businesses in securely and quickly migrating their databases to AWS.

AWS Migrations Black Belt

Our cloud team was awarded an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Black Belt for being able to foster domain-specific innovation and build offerings. Our community of highly skilled experts with deep technical knowledge and hands-on experience were able to put their skills on full display to achieve the highest level of recognition available.

AWS Lambda Delivery Partner

All of the learning, knowledge, experience, and success of Commencis’ Cloud team has been validated by becoming an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda partner. Partners like Commencis are certified to help businesses build or migrate solutions to a microservices architecture running on serverless computing.

IDC Cloud Awards 2022- BSH PIM project

With BSH our cloud team has been working on a project called PIM API, which is intended to be populating product information to all current and future digital touchpoints as a single source with a fast and cost-effective approach. The solution we built together with BSH on the AWS was awarded in the Cloud Transition category at the IDC Cloud Roadshow 2022.

Future of Cloud Summit 2022- BSH PIM project

The PIM project we implemented on AWS with BSH brought another award at Future of Cloud Summit 2022 Awards. The project was awarded as the ‘Best Cloud Implementation of the Year’.

Gartner on Eye Awards – Geleceğe Orman

Geleceğe Orman program which we created together with İş Bank won first place at the Eye on Innovation for Financial Services Awards in the EMEA region. We are delighted to be part of Işbank’s vision of a sustainable future as its strategic partner for digital transformation

20th Altın Örümcek Awards- İşCep

We placed first in the Banking and Finance category with İşBank’s app İşCep. All of our own team along with Türkiye İş Bank worked hard on optimizing the app and we’re proud of the recognition we’ve received.

20th Altın Örümcek Awards- Pegasus Airlines

Our Pegasus Airlines Kiosk project won an award in the Mobile App-Service category. Working with Pegasus was a joy for us and we’re proud of our achievement together.

Bronze Stevie Award- İş Portföy

İs Portfoy’s mobile app İş’te Fon won the bronze medal in the Mobile Site and App Awards at the Stevie Awards. We’re proud both of the award and in our part in helping Portfoy on their digital journey in what was a truly fulfilling collaboration.

Keeping our commitment to the environment and sustainability

A focus on the future, on sustainability, on social awareness projects, and on preserving the environment have been at the forefront of everything we’ve done for many years now. Whenever we’ve been able, we’ve tried to support environmental projects and sustainability projects both inside and outside of Turkey. We recognized that man-made climate change is steadily reshaping and destroying the world as we know it, and that to stop this tide, we all must work in unison to build a better world.

To that end, we supported a number of projects in 2022 that helped real people and real crises. We helped develop the Geleceğe Orman (Forest for the Future) program with İşbank towards a more sustainable future. Forest for the Future allows İşCep users to earn carbon points in exchange for normal daily activities and environmentally friendly banking transactions. They can then donate these points to plant trees and build a forest for the future.

Also, due to the destruction caused by humans, climate change and recent forest fires, the biological diversity of species in our country is gradually decreasing. We think that it’s extremely valuable and important to take inventory of all species of Anatolia, especially endangered species, to transfer them to future generations. That’s why we continued our sponsorship of Turkey’s most comprehensive habitat documentary ‘Anatolia Ancient Nature‘, brought to life by Burak Doğansoysal and his team. The documentary aims to create a visual inventory of Anatolian geography, which contains extremely significant species for the world’s natural heritage. It is planned to be broadcast in 2024.

You can check out here to watch the latest trailer of Anatolia Ancient Nature and support the team by subscribing to their Youtube channel and following them on Instagram.

Additionally, we focused on accessibility and we sponsored the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Accessibility Hackathon Prize, which was awarded to the 70.48 team’s Portable Prosthesis. The project aims to give more people around the world access and improve the lives of many people around the world.

We will continue our efforts for a better planet in 2023.