Our story · Since 2009
Cloud Holding didn't start as a strategy. It started with Petr Pilin and a simple, stubborn need: to work on his accounting software from outside the office. Over sixteen years, that one need became a cloud platform for 5,000+ businesses, and then a family of five specialised companies working across Europe.
Chapter 1 · 2009
In 2009, Petr Pilin wanted something deceptively simple: to run his accounting software from anywhere, on any device, without being chained to a computer in one particular office. At the time, data centres for small and mid-sized businesses were in their infancy. "Having a server outside the company," as Petr later put it, "was something only the brave were considering."
He built the solution he needed. A remote desktop, an SQL server, a Sharepoint, an Exchange - cobbled together into something that let him and his colleagues open the books from anywhere. It worked. And once it worked for him, other businesses asked if it might work for them, too.
That was the moment Cloud Holding started - not in a boardroom, but in a living room, with a laptop, a problem to solve, and a conviction that the way small businesses used software was about to change forever. iPodnik cloud was born.
"I started a company for an industry that barely existed yet. But the idea was simple - people needed to work from anywhere, and the technology was finally catching up."
Petr Pilin, founder
Chapter 2 · 2010 — 2020
Word spread quickly through the community that used POHODA, the accounting software by STORMWARE that dominates the Czech and Slovak SMB market. Accountants, small-business owners, family firms - they all had the same need Petr had, and iPodnik was ready to serve them.
Over the next decade the team grew from a handful of engineers into a proper operations organisation. RDP gave way to full remote-desktop platforms. SQL Server grew into dedicated database clusters. Office 365 arrived, and with it the first generation of truly mobile workers. By 2019 iPodnik was hosting POHODA for over 2,000 Czech and Slovak businesses - and had become STORMWARE's number-one cloud partner, a position it has defended every year since.
In parallel, Petr started investing in talent. The team partnered with the Střední škola automobilní a informatiky technical school and built Cloud Academy - an in-house training programme that still today takes young engineers from internship to full cloud specialists. Many of iPodnik's senior people started there.
Chapter 3 · 2021
By 2021, iPodnik had scaled beyond what any single founder could run day-to-day. Petr made a decision that surprised many of his peers: he handed the CEO role to Monika Šoltés-Fenyková, someone he had carefully prepared for the job - and he handed it over completely. He gave her his company phone number. He stepped out of the executive seat entirely.
Under Monika's leadership iPodnik kept growing - today serving more than 5,000 businesses and over 20,000 daily users, consistently rated STORMWARE's top cloud partner, with a reputation for Czech-language support that actually picks up the phone.
For Petr, the handover wasn't retirement. It was the runway for something bigger.
"Handing over operations isn't giving up control - it's trusting the people you chose. Monika runs iPodnik better than I ever did. That let me go build what comes next."
Petr Pilin
Chapter 4 · 2023
In 2023 Petr founded Cloud Holding - a deliberate umbrella built to do something no other Czech cloud group was doing: bring sovereign hosting, hyperscale integration, data intelligence and cybersecurity into one operational model, each as a focused brand with its own identity and its own specialists.
4clouds launched to tackle everything beyond POHODA - Microsoft Azure and AWS landing zones, Microsoft 365, backup with Veeam, networking with Cisco, endpoint protection with SentinelOne. Where iPodnik was the deep specialist for one workload, 4clouds became the generalist that could design and operate any enterprise stack for an SMB.
BYTECA took on the data and AI layer - Microsoft Fabric lakehouse, Power BI dashboards, and increasingly AI agents that pull insights from the company's own data. Because most SMBs already have the data they need to answer their important questions. They just need someone to put it together.
Nebeon joined next, focused exclusively on cybersecurity - endpoint protection, identity hardening, monitoring, response. A group that runs cloud for 5,000+ businesses can't outsource its security thinking; Nebeon codifies that thinking and makes it available to customers too.
Chapter 5 · 2024-2026
The relationship with Fameless began in 2024 as a business partnership, and in 2026 the company formally joined Cloud Holding as the group's fifth brand. Led by founder & CEO Emilie Tomanová, Fameless had spent more than ten years building exactly what iPodnik's customers were asking for: a deep e-commerce and automation layer on top of POHODA. FameDash, the web platform. FameBee, the API connector. Storage Monkey, the warehouse management system. More than a hundred e-shops already running on their tools.
The fit was natural. iPodnik hosts POHODA. Fameless makes POHODA do more. Together with 4clouds running the enterprise stack, BYTECA turning data into insight and Nebeon guarding the whole thing, the group suddenly offered every SMB the complete picture - from infrastructure to front-office automation to security.
That is where Cloud Holding stands today: five specialised brands, one operational backbone, ISO/IEC 27001 certification across every entity, and a founder who still believes in the same thing he believed in 2009 - that IT should be a growth engine, not a bottleneck.
Sixteen years in milestones
Petr Pilin starts iPodnik to solve his own problem - running POHODA from outside the office. The first cloud for Czech accounting software.
Office 365 integration arrives. The team grows. iPodnik becomes a recognised name in the POHODA ecosystem.
iPodnik is recognised as the top cloud partner of STORMWARE - a position it still holds every year since. Cloud Academy launches with the Střední škola automobilní a informatiky.
Over 2,000 businesses and 10,000+ daily users run on iPodnik. The company is ISO/IEC 27001 certified by DNV.
Petr hands over day-to-day leadership. Monika brings the operational focus that lets iPodnik double again in the years ahead.
The group formally launches with three specialised brands under one umbrella - sovereign cloud, hyperscale integration, and data intelligence.
Nebeon joins as the fourth brand, bringing cybersecurity in-house. Alongside, the group begins a strategic partnership with Fameless to extend POHODA with productised SaaS.
After eighteen months of close collaboration, Cloud Holding completes the acquisition of a majority stake in Fameless, formally welcoming the fifth brand into the group.
All five companies certified to ISO/IEC 27001 by DNV. Fifteen years after a single entrepreneur built his first cloud workspace, the group serves businesses across the EU.
The people behind the group
Founder · Cloud Holding
Founded iPodnik in 2009 and built Cloud Holding over the years that followed. After more than fifteen years as an entrepreneur, he leads the group's strategy with one conviction: IT should be a growth engine for a business, not a bottleneck.
Chief Holding Officer · CEO iPodnik cloud
Chief Holding Officer of Cloud Holding and CEO of iPodnik cloud since 2021. Petr Pilin has known her personally for more than twenty years and handed her iPodnik after she had run the general directorate of AV MEDIA, a billion-koruna Czech audio-visual technology group, and led the acquisition of ProMoPro - covering finance, HR, communications and operations. Her style - agile management blended with VUCA Leadership - is the quiet engine of how the holding grows.
CEO · iPodnik cloud & 4clouds
Lukáš's path shows what's possible at Cloud Holding for anyone willing to work hard and keep growing. He joined as a technical-support engineer and worked his way up to Director of IT Support in 2020 and to CEO of both iPodnik and 4clouds in 2024. He knows our cloud and the whole stack down to the smallest detail - because he's spent more than a decade building it. His approach defines how we treat our customers at iPodnik, how we hold the bar on quality, and how we build our services - close to the customer, without compromise.
CEO · BYTECA · Group CFO
Matěj brings the financial discipline that lets a five-brand group operate as one. He started his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, holds an MBA, and has spent over a decade leading financial governance, controlling and strategic finance for technology businesses. At BYTECA he leads the data and BI practice; across the group he owns financial planning, performance management and the dashboards that make the whole holding measurable.
Founder & CEO · Fameless
Founded Fameless and brings something rare to the group: a proven hand at turning customer-specific problems into productised SaaS. Under her leadership Fameless grew from a custom-development workshop into a software house with its own platforms - FameDash, FameBee, Storage Monkey - serving more than a hundred e-shops. She is the person who turns a one-off solution into a repeatable product, and that's exactly the muscle the group needs as it scales.
What holds us together
Five brands with different specialisms need a common spine. These are the things every company in the group shares - the non-negotiables that make us one group, not five.
01
Our own engineers run the platforms. From KVM and Ceph in Prague to Azure and AWS landing zones - if something breaks, the fix comes from us, not from a vendor's call queue.
02
Information security isn't a feature we added - it's the foundation every solution is built on. ISO/IEC 27001 certification across all five companies isn't a marketing badge; it's how we work.
03
European infrastructure, European contracts, European jurisdiction. With us, businesses don't have to choose between performance, room to grow, and knowing where and how their data is stored - they get all three at once.
04
Cloud Academy still trains the next generation of our engineers. Customers still get a person on the phone in their language. And behind every company we serve, we see a partner - not a number in a system.
The story continues
If you'd like to be part of what comes next - as a customer, as a partner, or as a future colleague - we'd love to hear from you.