Gert-Jan, Gijs and Huig are the three entrepreneurs. They met through a joint networking company called g-company.

For Cloudwise, modern education deserves modern IT solutions. This is where they can help their customers. Their solution takes the school network to the cloud and provides a structured school environment without servers, where it doesn't matter if you are at home, travelling or at school.

Currently, more than 120 people work for Cloudwise and its 'Cool' service is now active in 14 countries and available in seven languages, including Basque. The company is primarily focused on a few countries, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Spain.

It is in Spain where it has big plans to expand its business, either by working with partners or opening an office in Spain to gain a real presence on the ground. "Spain is an interesting market, above all because there is great take up of Chromebooks, Google Workspace and good digitalised editorial content," say the entrepreneurs.

For this mission, they have had support from ICEX-Invest in Spain's Rising UP in Spain, which focuses on attracting foreign entrepreneurs who want to set up and grow in Spain. The selected start-ups receive resources to develop their business in Spain.

For this integration in Spain, Cloudwise is urgently looking for Spanish schools or IT partners working with Spanish schools that would like to test their new Cool-Check solution and give them feedback. This is what its founders told El Referente.

After the initial uncertainty caused by COVID-19, where are you now? To what extent has the use of your solution increased?
There was already a trend in the Netherlands to make everything much more digital and to have schools equipped with devices for their students, so our software solution is designed for that. In some other countries, this (forced) growth accelerated due to COVID-19. This meant international interest in our suite and modules skyrocketed. I believe that this trend towards digitalisation in education will continue to grow rapidly, even after the COVID-19 pandemic is under control.

What are your plans in Spain? Will you eventually set up an office or work with partners?
We are currently supporting some schools and districts with our solution.

We are in talks with many partners to see if we can work together, either reselling our solution through them or integrating it with Spanish software products to make our product even stronger for the Spanish market. We are actively looking for more partnership opportunities and see many opportunities for Cloudwise in Spain.

How is ICEX helping with this? What do you get from this programme?
ICEX assigned Javier Alonso as a mentor who really helped us to understand the Spanish school system, how schools are organised in Spain and how they are financed. He also introduced us to a partner company and talks on cooperation are now at a very advanced stage with them. It was extremely helpful to have someone by our side who knew the country and could help us with research.

What about Spanish schools? How do they rate your solution?
They like it a lot, particularly its simplicity. Teachers sometimes have IT issues, but we get a lot of praise because our solution is so intuitive.

Miren Arrate Arrieta highlights the following example, "The security it affords teachers in their classrooms. You feel much more comfortable because you can see what your students are doing on their computers from your desk. It also gives you the freedom to do different classroom activities." This explains it very well.

Where else have you taken your solution and how do you adapt it to where you are?
Our solution is needed all over the world. But we make country-specific iterations as needed, of course. Local languages are one of the most important aspects that we have to add. Currently, we have Spanish and Basque, and we are assessing Catalan too.

Source: El Referente
Read the full interview: Cloudwise, an educational software supported by Rising UP in Spain (elreferente.es)

^{Photo: Cloudwise}