Cutting Cloud Costs by 70% and Reducing

Server Footprint from 81 to 15

Overview
A global B2C company faced escalating cloud costs due to a disorganized infrastructure. We
performed a comprehensive audit, rightsized resources, and consolidated servers, reducing
their server footprint from 81 to just 15. This strategic optimization resulted in a dramatic 70%
reduction in cloud hosting expenses without any loss of performance.

Key Metrics
● 70% reduction in cloud costs
● 81 servers reduced to 15
● 3x faster cloud management
● 0% performance degradation

The Challenge
The client’s rapid expansion had led to a sprawling, unoptimized cloud infrastructure. This
unmanaged growth created significant pain points that were draining valuable resources:
● Overprovisioned resources: Servers were sized for speculative, not actual, demand.
● Idle and forgotten servers: A high number of servers were sitting idle, a result of
completed projects or departed employees.
● Duplicated, costly environments: Development and testing environments were
unnecessarily replicating the size and cost of production environments.
● Inefficient service reliance: The company was over-relying on expensive,
one-size-fits-all services instead of more cost-effective, tailored solutions.
This chaotic setup resulted in a complex and inefficient cloud environment, with an astonishing
81 servers across various regions, many of which were underutilized or completely unused.

Our Solution
Vimware was brought in to overhaul the company’s cloud infrastructure with a clear mandate:
drastically reduce costs without compromising performance. We developed a multifaceted
strategy focused on rightsizing, consolidation, and optimization. Our solution involved:
 
● Comprehensive Audit: We began with an exhaustive analysis of every server,
workload, and application to determine actual resource usage and identify idle assets.
● Rightsizing Resources: We adjusted server sizes based on measured usage data. For
many workloads, this meant moving from oversized instances to smaller, more efficient
ones that still met their performance requirements.
● Server Consolidation: This was our core strategy. We identified and merged
underutilized resources and migrated workloads to more efficient computing models like
serverless architectures and containerization. This effort was the primary driver in
reducing the server count from 81 to 15.
● Cloud Service Optimization: We shifted the client from expensive general-purpose
instances to specialized, more cost-effective PaaS (Platform as a Service) offerings,
including managed databases and serverless platforms.
● Testing Environment Rationalization: Test environments were scaled down
significantly and configured to only replicate production scale when absolutely
necessary, such as during critical load testing.

The entire implementation was completed within 6 weeks, delivering immediate and tangible
results.

Implementation / Process
Our process was executed in a systematic, four-step approach:
1. Discovery & Analysis: We conducted a full audit to map the existing infrastructure,
identify pain points, and gather data on actual usage.
2. Strategic Planning: We created a detailed plan for rightsizing, consolidation, and
migration, prioritizing quick wins and high-impact changes.
3. Execution & Migration: Our team systematically shut down unused servers, rightsized
existing ones, and migrated workloads to more efficient, consolidated environments.
4. Training & Handoff: We trained the client's team on new, automated policies for
resource management and provided a streamlined oversight dashboard to ensure the
environment remained optimized.

Results
The strategic optimization delivered transformative outcomes, far exceeding the initial
cost-saving goals.
The most significant result was a 70% reduction in cloud hosting costs, which freed up a
substantial amount of capital for the company to reinvest in core business growth and
innovation.
This cost reduction was a direct result of our ability to streamline their infrastructure, reducing
their sprawling server count from 81 to just 15. This streamlined footprint not only lowered costs
but also simplified management and reduced the risk of security vulnerabilities.