Nov 3 (Reuters) – German cloud provider IONOS has been awarded a four-year framework contract to deliver a sovereign collaboration platform for schools across six German federal states based on Nextcloud’s open source suite, the companies said on Tuesday.
The project is part of a broader European push for digital sovereignty in public institutions, aiming to reduce dependence on proprietary platforms from major US technology companies, such as Microsoft and Google.
• The contract, procured by public-sector cooperative govdigital eG, covers Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, with other states able to join later
• Pricing is structured in five tiers based on active users, ranging from up to 50,000 to more than 500,000
• The maximum value of the framework agreement is €67.5 million, according to the federal government’s official procurement portal
• The solution is based on IONOS Nextcloud Workspace, combining file storage, document collaboration and communication tools, the companies said
• The platform will run exclusively in German data centres on open-source technology, without non-European dependencies, the companies said
(Reporting by Emanuele Berro in Gdansk; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
