Eric Klaasse is not leaving the company he founded, but he is formally stepping down as Chief Technology Officer of CloudSuite from January 1, 2024. He will be succeeded by his right-hand man and Co-CTO Gertjan Oude Lohuis.
“That continuity is part of our culture,” says Klaasse. “We didn’t want to mess with that. The decision for Gertjan to step up as CTO was made a few years ago. As a matter of fact, when I interviewed him for the position of software developer, I immediately had the feeling that Gertjan might one day step into my shoes. And that’s part of our culture too – that we give people the room to become what they can be.”
Klaasse co-founded CloudSuite in 2010 with Okko Huisman with the ambition to build an eCommerce platform that would serve B2B and B2C with equal ease.
“Eric’s functional experience and his knowledge are still important to me every day”
Their first big break was a call from FonQ, the online home decor store. “FonQ had started a project with Magento to serve international shops outside its Dutch home market. That failed, so they asked us if we could do it. And we said yes because our plan from the outset had been to build a multi-language, multi-currency platform for B2C and B2B.”
Six months later, Fonq Belgium opened its virtual doors on CloudSuite.
“When that worked, we had a very good business-to-business environment and a very good business-to-consumer environment in one product. You can work with the same system, the same database, and the same products to serve the B2C and B2B sides of your company. That is a huge advantage.”
CloudSuite’s versatility and its early success with FonQ allowed Huisman and Klaasse to focus on attracting larger businesses – a strategic move that had important technological repercussions.
It was during this period of transition that Oude Lohuis joined CloudSuite.
“Functionally I am very strong,” says Klaasse, “but technically you might say I had fallen a little behind. Gertjan brought his knowledge of all the latest technical developments, and this gave a huge boost to the further professionalization of the CloudSuite product.”
Klaasse and Oude Lohuis worked in tandem to drive a number of transformational changes. The first challenge was to develop a modern API architecture to make system and data integrations more intuitive and solid.
The cadence of new releases was restructured to ensure that CloudSuite’s clients are always running the latest version of the software.
The innovations that are currently taking the platform forward are microservices to accelerate the Software Development processes, and continuous deployment, which blurs the distinction between operational and test environments by “drip-feeding” new functionalities, sometimes at a rate of several times a day.
Oude Lohuis and his team will be responsible for this next phase of change, knowing that they can still rely on Klaasse’s input. “Eric’s functional experience and his knowledge of the history of the CloudSuite platform are still important to me every day,” says Oude Lohuis.
Klaasse is proud of what he has achieved and what he is passing on to Oude Lohuis and his other colleagues at CloudSuite. “Together we have built a platform that is incredibly rich in functionality compared with other enterprise platforms such as SAP, Adobe, and CommerceTools – but at a much lower cost, and with much better support. Commercially, our next ambition is to expand in Northern European markets which are a huge opportunity for us.
“I couldn’t have entrusted the platform to anyone more capable or more ready for the task than Gertjan. And I can’t wait to see where he and his team take CloudSuite next.”
Klaasse is definitely not retiring and will still be involved in the strategic thinking around the future of CloudSuite. Talking of the future, Klaasse volunteers one day a week to teach IT skills to primary school children in an area of The Hague with a predominantly immigrant population. “I teach them how to program toys,” he says. “A lot of these children struggle with Dutch, but they all understand toys! By getting them interested in IT from an early age you really increase their opportunities – and that’s very rewarding.”
It's that story of continuity and change, as Klaasse hands over to Oude Lohuis, and educates a new generation of Erics and Gertjans to be ready for the challenges of tomorrow.
EN
Nederlands 