Situation
A long-established household name manufacturer of consumer and industrial appliances globally was negatively impacted by world events in 2020. The organization needed to tighten budgets in every area of the company. IT was no exception. The IT organization was an early adopter of the public cloud and had moved the majority of their compute and storage to AWS. This client is a very mature cloud organization that ranks among the best in the industry. The CIO was in a difficult situation as they needed to find savings, but they did not believe their cloud environment would yield any. The answer was a 2 week Proof of Concept (POC) to limit the cost but test the environment for additional savings.
Where to start
As this was an accelerated program, the joint team of the client and CloudLogic needed to get to work immediately. Procurement produced contracts, the CloudCenter of Excellence (CCoE) produced cloud design documentation and provided access to the Cloud billing resources, and the cloud engineering team provided access to AWS reporting. CloudLogic interrogated the AWS account in detail and collated all of the artifacts from the stakeholders into a shared repository. The easy part was complete, now the real work began to analyze the data and find opportunities. Since this client was mature and had managed the environment effectively, the usual savings suspect areas were quickly discounted. We needed to look beyond tool-based recommendations and get creative if we were going to make the kind of impact the organization needed.
Key Success Criteria
1. No potential savings opportunities were off limits
2. The changes must not compromise business functionality or performance
3. The environment must retain the flexibility to rapidly scale up and down to meet specific event demands, particularly during multiple event launches
4. Significant production outages were not allowed during the process
5. The team needed results within 4 weeks
Timeline of Project
1. Establish Cloud Cost initiative with Stakeholders – Week 1
2. Obtain API access and begin analysis – Week 1
3. Load repository with stakeholder data – Week 1, 2
4. First round of identified savings opportunities – Week 1
5. Second round of identified savings opportunities – Week 2
6. POC results report and ongoing recommendations – Week 2
Lessons Learned
1. Even mature and industry leading organizations can find savings in the ever-changing public cloud market.
2. A POC minimizes client commitment and allows leadership to see the potential opportunity with limited risk and expense
3. A tool alone does not adequately address the complexities of a rapidly moving enterprise
4. Cloud Cost Optimization is an ongoing iterative process
5. Accountability and incentives are an important way to drive and govern behavior across a complex enterprise
6. Cloud Optimization is not just about economics. Improved designs, efficiency and reduced risk are often outcomes
Client Situation Today
This POC demonstrated the need for a programmatic approach to managing public cloud spend. The client was able to realize material savings and fund a full-scale optimization analysis of their entire environment, which is already identifying significant opportunities for economic benefit. CloudLogic continues to play a pivotal role as a strategic partner both proactively and reactively to the changing business climate this client finds in the world today. This client has been recognized as one of the leaders in the industry for their leverage and management of public cloud.
