experiences
Recently, ProcoliX attended the first edition of the Nextcloud Enterprise Day at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht. The event brought together IT professionals, project managers and executives who are actively exploring how to regain control over their digital infrastructure in a way that is independent, transparent and future-proof.
Photo via Nextcloud
What immediately stood out was the strong turnout and high level of engagement from the audience. Interest in digital sovereignty is clearly no longer a niche topic. In the Netherlands, momentum is visibly growing, with more and more concrete projects emerging in education, the public sector and among service providers. Although many initiatives are still in an early stage, the direction is clear: organizations want to move away from dependency and are gradually building alternatives that better align with their values.
The opening was delivered by Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud. Karlitschek realized long ago that handing over data and its control carried significant risks, and in 2010 he launched ownCloud, the predecessor of Nextcloud. The fact that the problems he anticipated were real is now undeniable. In his opening speech, he emphasized that the promises of American Big Tech mean little: U.S. legislation, particularly FISA and the Cloud Act, requires American companies to hand over data to the U.S. government upon request. This applies regardless of whether the data is stored in the United States or in a data center in the Netherlands.
In a lightning talk, Jacco Brouwer and Erik Dolle explained how municipalities are working toward a more autonomous digital working environment. The Association of Dutch Municipalities, together with government and market parties, is focusing on increasing digital sovereignty through pilots in which Nextcloud plays a central role. Municipalities such as Ede are exploring how to maintain control over data, costs and collaboration while jointly building a scalable and independent IT ecosystem without constantly reinventing the wheel.
After lunch, participants were divided into three breakout sessions. In one of these, Sam Ditmeijer and Rik Dekker from SURF demonstrated how Nextcloud is used in practice as a platform. They guided us from concept to real-world application and showed how organizations can build on an open foundation.
It became clear that Nextcloud is continuously evolving into a modular open source framework for intranets. SURF extends it with its own apps, such as MetaVlogs and IntraVlogs, which combine features like news, knowledge sharing and onboarding.
By using open standards such as WebDAV and integrations with existing tools, the platform remains highly interoperable. At the same time, extensions such as templates, metadata and real-time collaboration help Nextcloud evolve into a flexible and sovereign digital work platform.
What this day made especially clear is that digital sovereignty in the Netherlands is no longer an abstract concept, but is increasingly taking shape in real-world projects. At the same time, it is also clear that this development is still ongoing: collaboration, knowledge sharing and continued development remain essential.