A year of change at the top of the German-speaking ccTLD registries has culminated with Thomas Sutter being elected as the new Managing Director of the Switch Foundation, which has the responsibility for operating the registries for .ch (Switzerland) and .li (Liechtenstein).
First up we saw Richard Wein, the co-CEO at the Austrian registry nic.at (along with Chief Technology Officer Robert Schischka who continues), announce his retirement after 25 successful years with the company. His replacement is Andreas Musielak, appointed as the Chief Commercial Officer, who commenced his new role in July. Prior to this Musielak spent 11 years at DENIC as Chief Operating Officer and member of the Executive Board until the end of June.
Replacing Musielak at DENIC, the German registry, was Barbara Stolz who joined the Executive Board of the cooperative in May, allowing again for a two-month handover with Musielak. Stolz joined Thomas Keller as a full-time member on DENIC’s Executive Board.
The announcement this week saw the SWITCH Foundation Council elect Thomas Sutter as the new Managing Director of Switch. He will succeed Tom Kleiber, who is leaving the foundation at 2025. Martin Leuthold, Head of Security and Deputy Managing Director of Switch, will assume the post on an interim basis until Thomas Sutter takes up his duties.
Switch is not just a ccTLD registry though. The core aspects of the Switch foundation’s mission, as described on the Switch website, are to enable, maintain and promote a secure and networked research and education infrastructure in Switzerland. Many ccTLD registries were originally operated by, and some still are, universities.
Thomas Sutter has been CIO of the University of Zurich since July 2014, where he heads the Central IT department. In this role, he was particularly committed to user-friendly and secure solutions for students, instructors, researcher and employees, alongside the digital transformation of Switzerland’s largest university. Prior to that, he held various management positions at Zürcher Kantonalbank, KPMG, Arthur Andersen and PwC. Thomas Sutter has more than 25 years of management experience in the ICT industry and holds a degree in Information Systems from the University of Zurich (lic. oec. publ.).
“In Thomas Sutter, Switch is gaining a highly experienced leader with roots in the university community who has been committed to Switch for many years,’ said Alexandre Gachet, Chairman of the Switch Foundation Council. “As a member of the Foundation Council and Foundation Committee at Switch, he is also a knowledgeable expert on the foundation.”
Commenting on his appointment, Sutter said “Switch has been an eminently important joint ICT organisation for teaching and research in Switzerland for almost 40 years, and its importance is steadily increasing as digitalisation expands. I’m really looking forward to working with the foundation’s beneficiaries, customers and Switch’s dedicated team. Together, we will drive forward the digitalisation of Swiss universities and strengthen Switzerland’s digital sovereignty.”
Tom Kleiber will leave Switch at the end of 2025. During his five-year term, he has developed Switch into an agile digitalisation partner for Swiss universities and research institutions in the highly dynamic ICT environment, Switch said announcing his successor. He focused on working closely with the community, establishing cloud solutions and developing the Strategy 2025+ master plan.
“Over the past few years, Tom Kleiber has done remarkable work to prepare Switch for the future challenges of digitalisation in the university sector. On behalf of the Foundation Council, I would like to thank him sincerely for his numerous achievements and wish him all the best for the future,” says Alexandre Gachet.