IT is the largest industry in the province. The sector employs approximately 43,000 people in around 3,000 companies. Nowhere is the percentage of the population working in IT higher than in Utrecht, which places it firmly at the forefront of new initiatives and developments in the field of information technology. The province justly deserves its reputation as the ‘Silicon Valley’ of the Netherlands.

Services, specialists and facilities
Software and services are the main focus of IT activities in the province of Utrecht, including development, distribution and implementation of software applications. Multimedia technology is particularly strong, and state-of-the-art infrastructure is available to multimedia companies at new business locations and sites. You can easily access the specialists you need too – at Utrecht University and the Utrecht Institute for Higher Professional Education alone, more than 3,000 students are currently studying IT, communications technology, and computational sciences.

Leading the way
As a hotbed of IT development it’s no surprise that Utrecht is the base for many ground-breaking IT initiatives. The Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation (AGS), for instance, is a leading edge research center that advances the state-of-the-art in gaming, simulation and virtual reality. There’s also the e-business marketplace Media Plaza, permanently located in the Jaarbeurs Convention Center. These initiatives and others can also tie in to the national GigaPort project, an advanced experimental network for next-generation Internet development. The local industry uses it as a ‘test factory’ for pre-competitive research of advanced IT technologies and applications.

Good company
In Utrecht, you’re not only at the cutting edge of new IT development, you’re also in very good company. Prominent national and international operations that serve their northwest European markets from Utrecht already include Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Fujitsu Services, IBM, HP, Atos Origin, Sybase, and Hyperion Solutions. For more details, have a look at Who’s here.