Much faster than originally planned, the HPI School Cloud was rolled out in the Corona pandemic, supporting many thousands of schools in digital education. Within six months, the HPI School Cloud gained 3,500 schools nationwide. By December 2020, the number of users skyrocketed to more than one million. At the same time, the system was technologically aligned with the new needs. For example, a video conferencing system for learning from home was integrated. The learning store with digital educational content was expanded so that teachers could seamlessly use both state-specific and nationwide teaching materials in their lessons. In addition, thanks to many new developments, other important applications were integrated into the platform, be it a digital whiteboard or an interactive learning application, such as Bettermarks.
When the research project at HPI came to an end on July 31, 2021, the HPI School Cloud was transferred to regular operation by the German states of Lower Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia, which offer state-specific variants of the HPI School Cloud and will continue to collaborate on their development. At the time of the handover, more than 4,000 schools, and thus 1.4 million teachers and students, were working with the HPI School Cloud nationwide and at German schools abroad. The IT service provider Dataport AöR took over the technical operation and the further technical development of the School Cloud for the three states.