We’re exploring ways to optimize our infrastructure and processes but want to maintain the same level of reliability and performance. What practical steps have you taken to reduce IT cost,such as through cloud optimization, automation, license management, or vendor consolidation, while still ensuring service quality and end-user satisfaction?
Having worked with cloud cost management, I can say that one of the quickest wins we found was auditing our AWS usage. We reduced our AWS bill by over 30% in three months just by rightsizing instances and optimizing usage. We made some specific changes that really paid off:
- Switched from on-demand to reserved instances for predictable workloads, which helped lower costs significantly.
- Used Auto Scaling Groups to efficiently manage variable traffic based on demand.
- Leveraged AWS Trusted Advisor and CloudZero to identify idle resources and removed them.
- For data that wasn’t accessed often, we moved it to S3 Glacier to reduce storage costs.
On top of that, we set up cost alerts and dashboards for engineering teams, which made them more cost-conscious. This wasn’t just about trimming the fat, it was about making smarter, more intentional decisions. Surprisingly, the performance stayed steady while cutting a lot of hidden waste.
Adding to that, we saw substantial savings by automating our DevOps workflows. We moved away from manual server setups and updates by writing Ansible playbooks, which not only saved countless engineer hours but also minimized human error. But it didn’t stop there, there were other key changes:
- We replaced expensive commercial tools with open-source alternatives. For example, we switched from a paid APM tool to using Prometheus and Grafana, which delivered everything we needed for monitoring and was completely free.
- Consolidated overlapping SaaS tools across teams, so we weren’t paying for redundant subscriptions.
- And a small but impactful step—reviewing license usage. We found we were still paying for software users who had already left the company!
It was all about identifying opportunities to streamline and be more resourceful, all while ensuring we didn’t sacrifice the service quality our teams depend on.
That’s great to hear, and I totally agree with those strategies! To build on that, we had multiple services scattered across different vendors—cloud, security tools, and databases. We consolidated everything under one provider, Azure in our case, and got bundle discounts while simplifying support SLAs. This made managing everything a lot easier.
Another big move we made was adopting a hybrid cloud approach. We moved non-critical workloads to on-prem hardware that we already owned, instead of keeping everything in the cloud. It took careful planning, but over time, it really paid off.
One of the most valuable lessons we learned was tracking what’s actually being used versus what’s provisioned. Once we had that visibility, we realized that cutting costs didn’t impact reliability at all. In fact, it gave us more control over what we were spending and how we were allocating resources.