ICT giants Swico and Simsa "possibly" merge
Swico, the association of ICT providers, and Simsa, the association of the Swiss Internet industry, are reportedly planning to merge. This could significantly strengthen Switzerland's IT association landscape.
According to the official media release, Swico and Simsa are merging. The former association is the ICT provider of Switzerland. Simsa is the association of the Swiss Internet industry. The boards of Simsa and Swico have decided that the two organizations should merge into a single entity. In doing so, they want to represent the ICT and online industry, which is increasingly relevant to the national economy, even more effectively on the political stage. At the same time, all 600 member companies will gain access to a greatly expanded portfolio of member services.
The ICT and online industries are moving ever closer together, and value chains and business models are overlapping. This convergence should also be reflected in the representation of interests in politics and business as well as in the services for companies in the industry.
Against this background, the governing bodies of the two relevant ICT and digital industry associations have decided to merge their activities: The boards of Simsa and Swico have signed a merger agreement, which will be ratified by the members at extraordinary general meetings on 18 June 2018.
Simsa and Swico have been in close contact for several years, coordinate their political positions and exploit synergies in their range of services. As part of an assessment of the situation, the two boards have come to the conclusion that a unified and powerful presence for the Internet and digital economy is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, the forces are to be bundled under one roof. The goal is a higher member benefit as well as a stronger influence in politics and economy. Both organizations are financially well positioned, therefore synergies on the cost side are not in the foreground.
The approximately 100 Simsa and 500 Swico members still have to ratify the merger on 18 June. However, the last major attempt at a merger between ICTswitzerland, SwissICT and SI failed at the last extraordinary general meeting.
New expert committees, new boards
Simsa had previously also conducted merger negotiations with SwissICT, but these failed. There are already some advantages that support the merger between Swico and Simsa: Both associations are in close exchange, consult each other on political positions and use synergies in their range of services. The current Simsa President (and Netcetera CEO) Andrej Vckovski could "switch" to the new board, plus a representative of the web agencies, who is still unknown. The merger also creates two new expert boards: One deals with hosting and is headed by Claudius Röllin (Hostpoint CEO), the other deals with web agencies. Imre Sinka, CEO of Dotpulse, has been designated to head the committee.
Simsa activities will be integrated into the new Swico, including the "Code of Conduct Hosting" and the "Collaboration Framework", as well as the training courses for the Swiss Federal Diploma in Web Project Management. Among other things, Swico is bringing in its comprehensive issue management, its start-up programme and the industry solution for occupational health and safety.
