Hot on the heels of the very well received Travel & Tourism Vertical, IE is pleased to announce the three selected projects for its Cloud Computing & Cyber Security event on April 24th. The selected projects will pitch to a great panel of industry experts and investors and an audience packed with interested observers of the sector while competing for the chance to present at Venture Network in Tel Aviv.

As usual, each start-up will have 7 minutes to pitch to their project and then we'll have 10 minutes of Q&A from our panel as well as our audience.

A very VERY big thanks for IE Business School for sponsoring this months prize and to our amazing IE Alumni in Tel Aviv for helping us to put this together.

The three selected projects are:

Smoobility (www.smoobility.com)

Smoobility makes users of multiple devices more productive, efficient and creative by allowing access to their documents without delays or obstacles in contexts where previously it was not possible.

Torus Software Solutions (www.torusware.com)

Torus is a company spun out of the University of A Coruña and is specialized in high performance computing and communications. Their products and solutions accelerate applications in both corporate data centers and in the cloud and are of particular interest to the Finance & Trading, Telecom & IT, Energy, and Defense & Space industries.

Prot-on (www.prot-on.com)

Protección Online S.L. (Prot–On) has developed a disruptive cyber security technology that aims at being the new Cloud security protocol. The solution, called Prot–On Enterprise Edition, is an inter-operable protection software that allows the user to encrypt critical data and control access rights in order to share it with trusted partners.

Meanwhile, our expert panel evaluating the three projects consists of:

Alberto Gomez, Adara Venture Partners

Adara Partners is a venture firm with over 120M USD under management. They focus on European IT companies, particularly those that leverage the excellent and efficient engineering talent in Spain. Alberto led Adara's investment into AlienVault, the leading provider of Unified Security Management solutions and crowd-sourced threat intelligence (they raised a 26.5M USD Series D in Sept 2013).

Carlos Rodriguez-Maribona, Senior Associate at Axon Partners Group

Carlos leads the investment team of Axon Partners in Spain. Axon Partners is an international investment firm with over 180M USD in funds under management investing in companies in Latam, Spain and India, with a proven record of success in sectors including energy, healthcare and digital economy. Carlos has been responsible for deal sourcing and analysis of investment opportunities. He has been involved in more than 15 deals and is a financial and technological enthusiast.

Diego Cabezudo, CEO & Founder of Gigas

Gigas is one of the largest cloud hosting businesses in Spain as well as an important player in the UK, Columbia, Chile and Peru. Diego has a long history in the industry; his previous roles include CEO of AGS, an IT Consultancy firm, COO of FON, the largest WiFi network in the world and Head of Strategy at O2. He holds a MSc in Telecommunications Engineering and an MBA from London Business School and UC Berkeley.

Sonia Marzo Arnaez, Microsoft Bizspark

Sonia is Microsoft's Director for Innovation Centres in Spain where she runs the Bizspark program. This program positions Microsoft as a partner for start-ups through the use of support, training and technological access. Sonia is an expert in SME marketing and has a Masters in Marketing from ESADE.

Liz Fleming, Deputy Director IE Venture Lab

Amongst other things Liz is the founder of the Venture Network, Deputy Director at the Venture Lab at IE Business School and head of the €40m Co-investment Network for the Spain Startup Co-investment Fund.