IONOS Builds Cross-State School Cloud for Six Federal States

Karlsruhe/Berlin, November 3, 2026. govdigital eG has awarded IONOS the contract to provide a “file hosting and collaboration solution” ("KoDaS"). IONOS will serve as the general contractor and is responsible for the setup, migration, and operation of the solution. The request for proposals was conducted on behalf of the Educational Cloud Infrastructure ("Pädagogischen Cloud Infrastruktur" / PCI).

The Educational Cloud Infrastructure is a cross-state initiative involving Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Rhineland-Palatinate and is funded by the “Digital Pact for Schools”. It forms a joint cloud operating platform for the states, on which educational applications can be operated securely, scalably, and reliably—with shared operational services, monitoring, security mechanisms, and platform services running in the background.

The four-year framework agreement is billed based on active users in five tiers ranging from up to 50,000 to over 500,000 users, with no minimum purchase requirement. School districts can thus use the solution according to their actual needs and expand it gradually. Additional federal states may join the framework agreement.

“With KoDaS, we’re establishing a common European foundation for digital collaboration in schools across six federal states,” says Achim Weiß, CEO of IONOS SE. “Our cloud solution, developed in Germany, stands for security, reliability, and above all, digital sovereignty—which is indispensable, especially in the education sector.”

A Sovereign Workspace for the Education Sector

The solution is based on IONOS Nextcloud Workspace, which combines office software and groupware functionality. It provides teachers and students with a complete digital workspace for file storage, collaborative document editing, and communication. The platform operates exclusively in IONOS CLOUD’s German data centers and is built entirely on open-source technology—without any dependencies outside Europe.

“KoDaS demonstrates how joint procurement can work across state borders,” explains Jens Fromm, COO of govdigital eG. “The participating states receive a powerful and scalable solution that combines digital sovereignty with cost-effective procurement.”

“With the Pedagogical Cloud Infrastructure, we are jointly creating reliable framework conditions for a secure and sovereign digital education infrastructure,” says Torsten Brandt, chair of the PCI steering committee and representative of the Hessian Ministry of Culture, Education, and Opportunities. “KoDaS is another important building block: The participating states will be able to use the solution easily and in line with their needs in the future.”

Strong Partner Ecosystem

IONOS is responsible for the project as the general contractor and brings together the expertise of a specialized partner network for this purpose: The foundation is its Platinum partnership with Nextcloud. The consortium covers the entire value chain, from infrastructure and migration to operations.

A Benchmark for the Public Sector

KoDaS is a flagship project for IONOS CLOUD in the public sector. IONOS is already an established digitalization partner for government and education, including through its collaboration with ITZBund, Dataport’s education cloud, and projects with Komm.One and IT.NRW.