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Facts & Figures
SWITCH...
- is a non-state-owned foundation under private law.
- has 110 employees working at its head office in Zurich.
- has been developing Internet services that are making Swiss students, lecturers and researchers more successful for more than 25 years. Example: SWITCHaai – the single-sign-on solution now used almost daily by 98% of university members.
- offers selected web services to commercial customers too.
- operates its own high-speed fibre-optic network for universities and research institutes (including CERN and PSI) for the dependable exchange of data.
- founded the Swiss national computer security team in 1996: thanks to SWITCH-CERT, Switzerland is the world's number one in combatting malware.
- brought the Internet into Switzerland at the end of the 1980s and became the country’s first Internet service provider.
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Find further information on the SWITCH Foundation on our profile pages. |
Frequently asked questions & misconceptions
SWITCH ≠ domain registry
SWITCH ≠ federal property
What are the distinguishing features of SWITCH as a non-profit organisation?
Where does SWITCH derive its funding from?
What happens to the income from subsidiary switchplus?
SWITCH ≠ domain registry
The Foundation is dedicated to one main cause: the development of high-grade, customised web services and infrastructure that Swiss students, researchers and lecturers need for their day-to-day work. It was precisely for this reason that the Foundation was established in 1987. Right up to the present, SWITCH has played a key role as a technology and IT competence centre for Swiss universities and research. And, alongside this, SWITCH has been in charge of managing the .ch and .li domain names ever since the start of the Internet, given that researchers at Switzerland's universities need domain names too.
SWITCH ≠ federal property
SWITCH does not belong to the Confederation, neither is it half or three-quarters state-owned, and it is also not state-controlled. In the same way as any other foundation under private law, SWITCH enjoys economic freedom within the framework of its statutes. Web services that SWITCH has successfully developed for the universities – such as domain names or security services – can also be supplied to the public and to businesses.
What are the distinguishing features of SWITCH as a non-profit organisation?
SWITCH does not pursue any commercial profit targets at all but works to fulfil the overriding purpose of the Foundation: making students, lecturers and researchers in Switzerland more successful globally by providing them with the right Internet services. This is laid down in the Foundation's statutes, together with the strategic and economic methods open to SWITCH for achieving this purpose. SWITCH naturally also lets itself be measured in respect of its efficiency and acts in an economically sustainable manner. This is done in accordance with the mission and vision of the SWITCH Foundation (see profile pages).
Where does SWITCH derive its funding from?
The Foundation derives its funding from the IT services provided for universities and their affiliated organisations, from income from financial investments and from project contributions received from the Confederation and the EU. Income from commercial sources – such as security services, the earnings of subsidiary switchplus ag or the compensation agreed on with the Swiss Federal Office of Communications for running the registry – is used solely for funding new projects for the universities and research.
What happens to the income from subsidiary switchplus?
SWITCH invests the profit from its subsidiary switchplus ag directly in the education and research location of Switzerland: in new, innovative Internet technologies for the day-to-day university and research work of students, lecturers and researchers. In other words: in the same way as for all its other income, SWITCH uses this money in its entirety to support the Swiss universities too.