Case Study: IlliniCloud achieves 50% reduction in K–12 IT infrastructure costs with NetApp

IlliniCloud Saves School Districts 50% in IT Infrastructure Costs with Cloud Services

IlliniCloud is a nonprofit consortium that provides cloud-based compute, networking, and storage services to more than 350 K–12 school districts across Illinois and six other states. Faced with rising technology demands, tight budgets, and a six-person infrastructure team, IlliniCloud needed a flexible, scalable private cloud that delivered enterprise performance, secure multi-tenancy, and disaster recovery at the lowest possible cost.

Working with CDW‑G, IlliniCloud standardized on a NetApp and VMware-based private cloud—using NetApp FAS systems, Flash Cache, SnapMirror/SnapVault replication, and virtualization/security features—to accelerate provisioning, boost read performance, and protect data across multiple sites. The platform cut district IT costs by about 50%, increased I/O throughput by more than 70%, provided reliable backup and DR, scaled to growing workloads, and enabled districts to avoid large capital purchases (for example, $337K saved on DR and $500K avoided storage buys), freeing funds for classroom initiatives.

IlliniCloud

Jason Radford

Chief Technologist