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Cloud Optimization for Leading North American Retailer

Strongbow conducted a detailed review and savings analysis identifying 20%+ in potential savings for client’s $5M annual spend with AWS.

Client Situation:

  • $10B premier retailer with a growing public cloud footprint lacked cost controls for new cloud model
  • Decentralized deployment model with multiple accounts and service owners fueled growing costs
  • Neither third-party toolsets nor incumbent recommendations adequately optimized costs as additional financial and operational transparency was needed to reveal additional opportunity

Strongbow Approach:

  • Established a detailed baseline of current cost drivers
  • Strongbow reviewed utilization data, but also dug deeper to understand how applications affected workload placement decisions
  • Quantified the impact of re-sizing, reserving, and turning off instances, as well as longer-term savings from shut-down and new services (e.g. serverless)
  • Provided recommendations and key points for commercial negotiations

Result:

  • Developed actionable recommendations for $1M+ in annualized savings (~20% of spend) while avoiding vendor lock-in with the incumbent provider
  • Strongbow also provided additional recommendations to help customer with internal process controls and program governance to help control future growth in cloud expenses