Inefficient Cloud Systems Leading to a Surge in Costs
The global cosmetics retailer was facing escalating cloud costs that threatened to erode its profit margins. They aimed to identify $500K in potential savings over a 5-week period. Despite previous efforts, their cloud environment had several inefficiencies, including underutilized resources, lack of monitoring and cost controls, and suboptimal usage of compute and storage services. The challenge was to quickly identify cost-saving opportunities while implementing long-term strategies to prevent costs from spiraling.
Recognizing Quick Wins and Sustainable Savings
Xebia adopted a two-pronged approach: quick wins for immediate cost reduction and strategic changes for sustainable savings. Initially, the team focused on identifying short-term opportunities such as optimizing storage and compute resources, fine-tuning policies, and enhancing monitoring capabilities. Key actions included automated cleaning of tables to reduce storage costs, tuning or decommissioning expensive clusters, and implementing a proactive cost monitoring dashboard. Additionally, Xebia introduced best practices through training sessions given to the retailer’s team, as well as 1:1 sessions to optimize their queries and workloads.
Streamlining Cloud Operations in Just 5 Weeks
The project was executed over 5 weeks, with Xebia collaborating closely with the retailer’s team. The process involved conducting a thorough analysis of the client's cloud environment, identifying inefficiencies, and implementing recommended actions. Xebia also facilitated office hours to educate close to 100 employees on cost optimization techniques and worked directly with colleagues to drive changes.
