asknet Solutions AG expands academic business activities in Switzerland and starts exclusive student license distribution of Adobe Creative Cloud software on behalf of SWITCH

October 8, 2021, Karlsruhe (Germany) - asknet Solutions AG, a leading procurement, e-commerce and EdTech specialist, has entered into a three year contract with SWITCH to distribute Adobe Creative Cloud licenses to students in Switzerland. The SWITCH foundation supports universities and other partners within and outside of the Swiss academic world to make effective and efficient use of opportunities presented by digitalization. Within this context, SWITCH also coordinates the distribution of software licenses to Swiss-based students, an essential undertaking to assure a high standard of educational quality in today's world, especially in times of pandemic.

While SWITCH holds a client framework agreement with Adobe for purchasing Adobe Creative Cloud licenses, asknet will take care of license distribution, offering Swiss-based students an easy access to a broad range of leading software at special conditions. As the first step, the company will use its renowned portal to distribute licenses to students, ensuring quick and easy availability of the software. Thus, asknet will provide both the solution and the corresponding services, including the portal with automatic student authentication, the processing of payments, risk minimization through ensuring high renewal rates as well as license allocations and customer support management, especially during request peaks at the beginning of each semester.

Christian Herkel, CEO of asknet Solutions AG: "We are very pleased to start our cooperation with SWITCH and I want to thank all parties involved for overcoming the key challenge of implementing this project in a short period of time. For asknet, it is an important milestone, driving our expansion in the Swiss education market. Besides offering students in Switzerland special conditions for Adobe Creative Cloud licenses for the next years, we also aim to further expand our business activities in Switzerland by exploring cross-selling opportunities and our existing client relations and partnerships."

SWITCH is the competent and trusted partner for digitalization issues that jointly concern the education, research and innovation community in Switzerland. In this role SWITCH is able to negotiate contracts with commercial providers on behalf of all universities. University members, students, lecturers and researchers therefore benefit from better terms.

SWITCH concludes to be very happy to reach this agreement. As of today all members of the university community had the opportunity to obtain Adobe Creative Cloud via their university.

Adobe Creative Cloud offers more than 20 industry-standard apps for design, photography, video, and web. As students develop in-demand digital skills with these tools, they also learn how to express their ideas in more visually compelling ways. The demand for those tools at universities is expected to rise. According to projections by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, the total number of students in Switzerland goes up with an average annual increase of 1.3% and 270,475 students enrolled as of the fall semester 2020/2021.

With the assistance of asknet, SWITCH is able to provide a centralized distribution of licenses to public universities. Since September 1, 2021, Swiss-based students can access Adobe Creative Cloud licenses at special conditions through .

About asknet Solutions AG

asknet Solutions AG is a renowned procurement, e-commerce and EdTech specialist headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany. The company offers software procurement and distribution for European universities and is the undisputed market leader in Germany (Academics Business Unit). The asknet portfolio includes a wide range of high-quality software applications for the academic sector, ranging from IBM SPSS to Adobe Creative Cloud. By continuously expanding its portfolio beyond software procurement, through partnerships with leading software manufacturers such as Blackboard and Dell, asknet aims to become the leading IT service provider in the European education market. The company also develops and manages online stores for digital and physical products worldwide (eCommerce Solutions Business Unit). Leading global publishers such as Cyberlink and Steinberg rely on asknet's e-commerce expertise to distribute their products in more than 190 countries. asknet Solutions AG is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (Ticker: ASKN; ISIN: DE000A2E3707).

About SWITCH

SWITCH is the competent and trusted partner for digitalization issues that jointly concern the education, research and innovation community in Switzerland. The independent foundation helps universities and other partners within and outside the academic world to make effective and efficient use of the opportunities presented by digitalization. SWITCH has been the registry for .ch and .li domain names since the early days of the internet. The foundation employs around 130 people at its headquarters in Zurich.

Contact asknet Solutions AG

Magda Gajny
+49(0)721/96458-6116