One of our customers adopted a “cloud unless” strategy several years ago, eliminating infrastructure CAPEX and increasing security levels. Cloud usage remained relatively stable, therefore there wasn’t much effort necessary for cost control.
Until AI-assistants were planned to support machine operators and quality engineers. Without cost control, cloud infrastructure costs would have doubled.
We assisted the customer to implement AI solutions, and an automation engine to keep cloud costs under control.
Firstly, we analyzed the contract with the existing cloud provider to assess resource reservations and financial commitments. No real adjustments or additions were necessary to allow for cost optimization, so the contractual part was in order.
We then focused on technical measures to balance cloud resources from the start and implemented an automation engine for continuous cloud cost focus.
Our approach was to implement an automatic savings detection system using data connectors and RPA to save costs in the long term. The next step was to implement an automated workflow system that allows IT staff to approve/reject recommendations generated by the savings detection system.
The final step was to automatically generate a savings dashboard so that there is a continuous overview of expenses and savings.
The solution has prevented about 25% of the monthly cloud costs that the customer would otherwise have had. This means the payback period of the cost control implementation was about 6 months. Moreover, the solution can continuously detect potential savings without any effort from IT staff, preventing costs for years to come.