CHAMPAIGN — It used to take days to back up all the information stored on the Champaign school district's servers.

Email, teachers' materials, student work — all of it was backed up in pieces over three to four days, and stored off-site on tapes.

Now that same information is backed up overnight and stored remotely, saving time and money.

The Champaign school district is one of 150 districts in the state that are part of IlliniCloud, a nonprofit cloud-computing consortium for Illinois schools.

IlliniCloud provides virtual servers, online storage and high-speed network connectivity for the school districts, including those that can't afford to buy the hardware and software themselves. It's a way for the districts to share resources and costs.

"When you look at our needs from a technology standpoint, it's enterprise level. It's not small. When you do something at that level, the cost is not insignificant," said Roger Grinnip, director of information technology for the Champaign school district.

"What they're offering is a significant decrease in what it costs you to do it yourself," Grinnip said. "It makes sense for any school district, especially small school districts."

The consortium began in 2009 in the Bloomington school district, developed by that district's director of technology, Jim Peterson, with the help of technology company CDW.

It includes three data centers around the state, at the Bloomington, DeKalb and Belleville Township High School districts. Districts are able to rent storage and pay for only the amount they use.

The districts began using the cloud to back up data or host applications such as student information systems, according to CDW. During the pilot phase, services have been free to school districts, as long as they paid a small annual membership fee, but the consortium plans to start charging for services.

CDW estimates participating school districts can save 30 to 60 percent of their spending on information technology. Grinnip said he expects the Champaign district to save $250,000 to $300,000 over a five-year period.

"Having a resource like IlliniCloud allows us to look at putting dollars into areas that will enhance the education of the whole district," he said.

For example, money could be put into wireless technology and other infrastructure at school buildings, rather than replacing servers and hard drives. And the district can't afford to buy the level of software being used for the IlliniCloud, he said.

"We're going to have a high level of capability that we couldn't afford to do on our own," Grinnip said.

That includes software that eliminates duplication of the same files and saves time and storage space in backing up data.

The Champaign district will also have faster access to educational videos through a service it already subscribed to, but which will now stream faster and more smoothly thanks to its connection to Bloomington, which hosts the videos.

The IlliniCloud consortium hopes to grow to include 400 school districts within three years. It hopes to eventually offer services such as hosted software and an open-source video-sharing system, according to CDW, and launch a statewide data collection and warehousing system to allow districts to integrate different systems and generate reports to analyze data, such as student performance, enrollment and demographics.

While much of the information on Champaign's servers is backed up virtually in Bloomington, and encrypted in the process, the human resources and student records information is still backed up on tape.

"I'm not comfortable with putting ourselves at risk with that right now," Grinnip said. "I protect that pretty hard."