Custom software, built where the work happens

What does Cloudzicht do?

Cloudzicht builds custom software for companies in the Netherlands. We start on the floor rather than at a conference table, because the problem is rarely what the brief says it is. Our engineers speak Dutch with your operators and English with your board.

We are based in Almere and we are small on purpose. The people who scope your problem are the people who build it, so nothing is lost in a handover.

Why does that sound so Dutch?

Because it is, and it is the most useful thing we can tell you about how we work.

This country was handed a problem with no off-the-shelf solution: a large part of it sits below sea level. Nobody solved that with a strategy document. People looked at the water, drew something, built it, watched what the water did, and adjusted. Then they did it again, for eight hundred years. The land you are standing on is the result.

That is the same instinct we bring to software. Draw it, build a small piece, put it in front of the people who have to use it, see what actually happens, adjust. We are builders who think rather than thinkers who occasionally build, and for the kind of problem that has no ready-made answer, that turns out to be the difference.

Does the country really explain anything?

Probably more than it should.

Look at the Netherlands on a globe and it is roughly the size of a pin stuck in the map. That pin has given the world windmills, flood defences that hold back a sea, an unreasonable number of well-known musicians, and a technology sector far larger than the landmass justifies. Innovation, engineering and thinking sideways appear to be in the national character — though we have never entirely ruled out the drinking water.

What we can vouch for is the working half of it. There is a Dutch expression for getting on with something difficult: *standing in the mud*. Nobody here is put off by a storm or a bit of rain, because there is a great deal of both and the work still has to be done. A hard problem is treated as a decent way to spend a week rather than a reason for another meeting.

You will notice that in how we work with you. We would rather show you something imperfect on Thursday than something polished in six weeks, because the imperfect thing tells us both what is actually wrong.

Who is this page for?

For anyone running or buying technology in the Netherlands who works in English while the operation around them runs in Dutch.

That combination causes a specific problem that no supplier seems to write about. To understand what really happens in a process, someone has to stand next to the person doing it — and that person almost certainly works in Dutch. Meanwhile the decision, the budget and the reporting are in English. Most suppliers pick one side and lose the other.

We do both, and that is the whole reason this page exists. More on how that works in practice: how we work on site.

What kind of work do you take on?

Three kinds, and they overlap.

Software that replaces several packages. Companies rarely choose to run four systems; it grows that way. When none of them fits how the company actually works, joining them is sometimes cheaper than replacing them — and sometimes it is not.

Connections between systems that do not talk. Including systems with no API. There is usually another way in, and which one fits depends on how fresh the data has to be.

Tools that price or configure something. Quote configurators, calculators, anything where a salesperson currently opens a spreadsheet and hopes.

Why should you not hire us?

Because we say no reasonably often, and it is fairer to say that here.

If a standard package covers what you need, buy the package. If you already know exactly what has to be built, buy a fixed scope from a builder — that is cheaper than what we do. If the process itself is the problem, software will only make a tidy mess.

We are worth the money when the problem is real, not yet sharp, and no package covers it.

Where can I read more?

Most of our writing is in Dutch, because most of our clients are. The page that explains how we work on your site is here in English; the Dutch service page is onze Nederlandse dienstpagina, and the founders are on who we are.

Call +31 36 52 98 447 or email info@cloudzicht.nl. We answer in whichever language you write in.