On September 4th, we hosted the first Limburg Regional Development Roundtable in Heerlen. The purpose of this event was clear: translate the findings of our State of Limburg’s Digital Ecosystem report into a forward-looking discussion on how Limburg can strengthen its own digital ecosystem.

A digital ecosystem, which consists of local digital infrastructure, services and solution providers, underpins economic growth, sustainability, and innovation in every region. Yet, its true potential is only realized when it is developed with a systems-perspective and connected end-to-end as a regional value chain.

The Leitmotiv: Regional, Sovereign, Sustainable

To build a resilient and thriving digital ecosystem, regions need to embed the full value chain locally.

• Local digital services should rely on locally operated infrastructure.

• That infrastructure should be housed in regional data centers.

• And local solutions providers should turn services into digital solutions that support regional businesses, governments, and communities.

Our vision is that every region should have the ability to develop thriving digital ecosystems and shape them according to their own values. Technological advancement alone is not enough—sustainability, transparency, and local autonomy require equal attention. For Limburg, this means ensuring the digital ecosystem supports the province’s broader ambitions: economic development, sustainability, and resilience.

Limburg: Ambitious but Dependent

Although Limburg has strong policy ambitions, the province’s digital ecosystem is fragmented and heavily dependent on international cloud and infrastructure providers. This creates several problems:

• Dependence on non-European players reduces regional digital autonomy of Limburg.

• A large share of economic value is leaking from the province rather than being retained locally.

• Knowledge creation opportunities from developing local services and solutions are missed.

Currently, Limburg's approach to digital policy is disconnected from how the digital ecosystem actually works. Most strategies and policies focus on the demand side of digitalization— skills development, e-government services, and technology adoption—while the supply side of the digital ecosystem that makes digitalization possible is out of scope. In SDIA terms, the ecosystem is one regional value chain: digital infrastructure (data centers and networks), IT services, and solution providers working together to enable digitalization. Treating these layers in isolation leads to misaligned efforts, value leakage, and continued dependency. To meet its climate and prosperity goals, Limburg needs one policy frame that plans—and measures—the ecosystem as a whole, focusing not only on how to digitalize but on strengthening the digital ecosystem itself.

Key Insights from the Report on State of Limburg's Digital Infrastructure Market

• Fragmented ecosystem: Limburg relies heavily on imported technologies and external providers, leaving significant untapped potential for local value creation.

• Low visibility: Regional providers are not visible enough and rarely communicate their contributions to Limburg’s policy goals.

• Alignment gap: Limburg’s climate, transparency, and local impact goals are not embedded in reporting or procurement norms. Weak policy signals keep providers low-visibility—few publish sustainability strategies or procurement criteria—making it hard to steer the ecosystem toward provincial objectives.

• Local impact under the radar: While local businesses contribute through employment, skills training, and local initiatives, these effects are not visible because they are not systematically monitored.

The roundtable provided an opportunity to reflect on the report’s findings and, more importantly, to identify concrete instruments that can move the province closer to a thriving digital ecosystem.

After the presentation of the report, participants engaged in a discussion to explore how Limburg’s digital ecosystem could be strengthened in practice. Rather than adding new ambitions, the focus was on translating Limburg’s ambitions and existing foundations (like “Triple Helix”) into a thriving digital ecosystem with concrete, achievable instruments that the province could adopt. From this exchange, two clear ideas emerged.

Establishing a Digital Harbor and Improving Visibility of Local Digital Businesses

Digital Harbor - Limburg’s own Internet Exchange

• Creating a regional internet exchange in Limburg - as a not-for-profit connectivity platform. Today, internet traffic between two parties inside Limburg takes a detour through centralized, national internet exchanges. This can be Amsterdam (AMS-IX) or Frankfurt (DECIX). This means local businesses cannot connect directly with regional digital infrastructure and services and local operators must invest into separate connectivity to connect to those national hubs. This adds latency, increases costs for local providers, and makes Limburg more dependent on infrastructure outside its borders.

• A provincial internet exchange (’a digital harbor’) could change that, following the example of other regional exchanges such as Ruhr-CIX and Frys-IX. The concept is simple: connect Limburg’s existing data centers with each other and enable each to function as a ‘digital berth’; enabling local businesses to connect to highways towards Germany, Belgium and Amsterdam and to the other facilities in the region. It enables both the local exchange of data as well as national & international connectivity.

• The potential is significant and can serve as the foundation for further digital ecosystem development in Limburg. By keeping traffic local, digital businesses and customers in Limburg would experience faster and more reliable digital services. It would attract foreign investment from content-delivery providers such as Netflix, Cloudflare or Fastly who could establish data-cached (’storage facilities’) inside Limburg, reducing transit costs while improving performance. For local digital companies, it would create a stronger foundation on which to build services, making them more competitive and easily accessible from within the region.

• As with logistics infrastructure, regions compete on airports, harbors, and major highways because they facilitate trade, a regional Internet exchange is the digital equivalent. It provides large-scale highways for data to flow in and out of Limburg, enables low-cost data exchange within the province and thereby strengthens resilience and sends a strong message that Limburg is ready to develop its digital ecosystem on its own terms.

Limburg’s Digital Ecosystem Community: A directory and coalition to make local infrastructure, service and solutions providers more visible

The second instrument that came out of the discussion is the creation a Limburg Digital Ecosystem Community. This community would host a directory of services, solution providers and infrastructure offerings available in the region, lowering the bar for local businesses to choose regional IT first. It creates visibility for local digital ecosystem actors and sends a clear message ‘We are here to support the digitalization goals of Limburg’.

• Our surveys show that the majority of regional providers struggle with visibility within their own regions. Further, our Limburg report showed that majority of IT providers in Limburg are small businesses with a balance sheet of less than €2 million. These companies lack resources to compete for attention with large global service, infrastructure and solution providers.

• Digital ecosystems are currently dominated by global actors which increasingly create an anti-competitive market environment that make it difficult for SMEs to participate. These global players leverage their market power to establish lock-in effects, where customers become dependent on their technologies and face significant switching costs. By bundling services, creating proprietary standards, and controlling solution ecosystems, they effectively push local providers to the margins, making it difficult for them to compete on a level playing field despite often offering more tailored solutions for regional needs.

• As a result, when municipalities, schools, or businesses in Limburg look for digital solutions and services, they often choose well-known, visible actors who operate outside Limburg, the Netherlands and most often outside of Europe. This means that value creation and opportunities leave Limburg instead of staying in the local economy.

• A Digital Ecosystem Community could tackle this challenge by pooling resources to invest in visibility. Instead of each company struggling with being seen in the marketplace, providers come together and organize as a community. They could fund joint marketing, create a professional directory of regional digital solutions & services, and run campaigns under a shared brand: Digital Limburg – driving our digital transformation.

• The directly hosted by the community would not only serve as a marketing tool to help local providers become more visible and competitive, but also as an instrument for policymakers and buyers. A searchable repository of regional providers and services enables local schools, universities, businesses or municipalities to buy local and pick a provider that delivers on their specific requirements.

• The goal of the community is to deliver market visibility and enable discovery. For the Province, supporting the community would support economic development; helping local providers become visible, competitive and connected to customers. For the providers, it offers scale: individually they may not be able to become omnipresent, but together they can. And for Limburg’s digital ecosystem, it would mean more value creation stays in the province, generating local jobs, tax revenues, and innovation

To get this started, we have launched a petition for regional providers to make themselves heard and create visibility for Limburg’s digital ecosystem.

Conclusion

The findings are clear: Limburg’s digital policies are disconnected from how the digital ecosystem works in practice, and low visibility keeps regional providers off the radar—so value leaks out, and incentives stay weak.

The roundtable translated this into two concrete instruments:

• Digital Harbor: Creating Limburg's own internet exchange to connect local data centers, reduce dependence on external infrastructure, improve performance, and attract investment while keeping digital traffic within the region.

• Limburg's Digital Ecosystem Community: Establishing a directory and coalition of local digital providers to increase their visibility, making it easier for regional organizations to choose local services over global competitors.

Take action now:

• Sign the petition: Help make Limburg's digital ecosystem providers visible and support local value creation by signing our petition for regional providers.

• Stay informed: Sign up for our newsletter to receive updates on Limburg's digital ecosystem development and future initiatives.

By strengthening Limburg's digital ecosystem through these measures, the province can retain more economic value locally, create jobs, generate tax revenue, and foster innovation while reducing dependence on external digital infrastructure.

Read the State of Limburg’s Digital Ecosystem report.