Van de Lagemaat and Loohuis found the personal connection in their shared Twente mentality: not too much fancy talk, it just has to work. Because: products that work well is the best advertising you can have. Van de Lagemaat explains: ‘I always explain our service using the metaphor of a motorway: if you want to transport money on the public road, you do it with a money car. The internet as we know it is a highway where you don’t know which route that car is going to take and you have no idea who has a key to the money car. What we are building is, with a fancy word, a virtual private connection: everyone has their own lane, with crash barriers in between, you decide the route yourself and on your own lane no one can touch your stuff. That secure network is well established here in the region. The cooperation with Loogisch was the perfect addition to the network.’
Loohuis continues: ‘That connection was essential for us, because you want to have control over your connections over which we provide our services and be able to monitor them yourself. Always. Whether it’s your neighbour in Tubbergen or a gigantic company in Berlin. We use NDIX’s connections for this purpose and build the ICT customised solutions for our customers ourselves. From cloud services to telecom, everything is possible. Our customers don’t need to know about technology themselves, we don’t try to sell them all kinds of additional products. We just want to solve their problem with state-of-the-art technology. Quite straightforward. And we can use NDIX for that right now. Correction: forever!’
“That connection was essential for us, because you want to have control over your connections over which we provide our services and be able to monitor them yourself. Always.”
Market opportunities
That Twente is ahead in terms of digital infrastructure is no coincidence. In fact, the departure of Booking.com has been the driving force behind a lightning-fast development. Plenty of investments were made in a solid fibre-optic network. Everything was done to ensure such a departure would not happen a second time. ‘Because of that drive, we now have a rock-solid network here in the region,’ van de Lagemaat explains. ‘An additional advantage is that we are not the most expensive region; we supply a Mercedes in Twente for the price of a mid-range car, so to speak. That offers opportunities.’
Loohuis added: ‘Our location here in Twente is perfect in relation to the Randstad and Germany and with our super powerful networks we are the gateway, so to speak, between Amsterdam and Frankfurt. With that, we rely on the strength of Twente, because that position is truly unique. Cooperating with our neighbour Germany suits us well anyway: especially within the Euregio area, you really notice a like-minded mentality. Moreover, there are plenty of opportunities throughout Germany, as it is still in its infancy in terms of digital infrastructure. This spring, Angela Merkel warned the Germans to catch up with the transformation of us, the Netherlands, into the digital economy with our powerful digital infrastructures. That is why in Germany we are now growing at lightning speed, a lot of investments are being made. This is also badly needed, by the way, because via the 4G networks and backbone there, you can barely send a video. We want to tackle that, together with NDIX. The first lines have already been set up.’
Every company is an ICT company
The importance of working digitally was exposed recently: the coronavirus forced us to work more and more from the cloud. ‘If something like this had happened 20 years ago, everything would have fallen flat,’ says Loohuis. ‘The fact that the economy in the Netherlands was able to keep going reasonably was thanks to digitalisation steps we had already taken. It’s great that we can contribute to that, because you see now how essential it is to have that in order.’
‘These times make it evident that working digitally is even more important than we thought,’ adds van de Lagemaat. ‘Every company is gradually becoming an ICT company. Look at Huuskes for example, just a butcher’s shop you might think. But behind it is a gigantic system that processes all orders, controls production and regulates deliveries. Does the system fail? Then the business grinds to a halt and patients in the hospital, for example, don’t get a hot meal that day. This is precisely why we aim for the most reliable connection. To which Loogisch can then connect perfectly with their ICT solutions. That is the way forward. A cooperation we are proud of!
“These times make it evident that working digitally is even more important than we thought”
