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Case Studies

Real results,
documented.

See exactly what we optimized, how we did it, and the numbers to prove it.

01 Full optimization

Marketplace SaaS

38% cost reduction in 45 days

38%
reduction
$31k
saved/mo
45
days

Background

B2C marketplace with $82k/month AWS bill growing 15% month-over-month. Engineering focused on features, no bandwidth for cost work.

The Problem

Snapshots piling up for years. RDS instances sized for peak that never came. Zero commitment coverage. Finance asking questions nobody could answer.

Our Approach

  • → Audited spend and identified top cost drivers
  • → Found 3 RDS instances oversized by 2x
  • → Discovered $18k/mo in orphaned resources
  • → Analyzed S3 access patterns for lifecycle optimization

Changes Made

  • Rightsized RDS (r5.2xlarge → r5.xlarge) after load testing
  • Cleaned up 847 orphaned snapshots
  • Implemented S3 lifecycle policies
  • Purchased Compute Savings Plan at 60% coverage

Results

$82k → $51k monthly. Savings Plan: $14k. Rightsizing: $9k. Cleanup: $4k. S3 lifecycle: $4k.

Tradeoffs

Left some RDS optimization on the table for safety margin. Application architecture changes deferred for later.

02 Compute + Commitments

B2B Analytics Platform

$22k/month saved

$22k
saved/mo
28%
reduction
70%
coverage

Background

Series B company, $78k monthly AWS spend. Heavy compute for data processing. Zero commitment coverage — all on-demand.

The Problem

EC2 fleet grown organically. Oversized instances from debugging that never got reversed. Batch jobs on expensive on-demand 24/7.

Our Approach

  • → 90-day utilization analysis across all EC2
  • → Mapped instances to workload types
  • → Identified consistently underutilized instances
  • → Modeled Savings Plan scenarios

Changes Made

  • Rightsized 40% of EC2 fleet
  • Moved batch processing to Spot with on-demand fallback
  • 1-year Compute Savings Plan at 70% coverage
  • Instance scheduler for dev/staging

Results

$78k → $56k monthly. Savings Plan: $12k. Rightsizing: $6k. Spot: $3k. Scheduling: $1k.

Tradeoffs

Chose 1-year commitment over 3-year for flexibility. RDS Reserved Instances deferred pending migration.

03 Storage + Transfer

Data Platform

25% reduction via storage optimization

25%
reduction
$18k
saved/mo
60
days

Background

Data-intensive platform, $72k monthly AWS spend weighted toward S3 and data transfer.

The Problem

S3 growing 20% per quarter with no lifecycle policies. Cross-region replication copying everything. NAT gateway costs spiking.

Our Approach

  • → Analyzed S3 access patterns via Storage Lens
  • → Mapped data transfer flows
  • → Identified NAT traffic that could use VPC endpoints
  • → Audited replication rules

Changes Made

  • S3 Intelligent-Tiering for 80% of buckets
  • Lifecycle: IA at 30 days, Glacier at 90
  • VPC endpoints for S3, DynamoDB
  • Optimized cross-region replication to critical data only

Results

$72k → $54k monthly. Storage tiering: 35% reduction. Transfer: 40% reduction.

Tradeoffs

Some retrieval now slower due to Glacier. Acceptable for compliance data.

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