High-stakes software company saves 20% cloud spend with Lightstream’s cloud managed services

High-stakes software company saves 20% cloud spend with Lightstream’s cloud managed services

Lightstream’s Cloud Managed Services empowers the company with enhanced visibility, security, configuration and a 20% savings in overall cloud spend

Business Challenge

A leading developer of governance, risk management, and compliance software solutions was housing most of its infrastructure within Amazon Web Services (AWS). Migrating to the cloud made it easy for the company to procure and spin-up resources quickly in real time, increasing their agility and innovation and giving them an edge over the competition. Security was of utmost importance, with high-profile customers frequently exchanging extremely confidential documents and assets. The cloud gave the company a secure global portal and facilitated communication and collaboration between customers and IP.

While the focus on advanced technology and security had always been a top priority, service procurement and spending visibility had become increasingly challenging as the company’s cloud usage expanded along with its global footprint. Employees across all areas of the company utilized AWS cloud services for their daily operations, resulting in a high monthly expenditure that was exceeded only by payroll. The organization was using dozens of AWS services and constantly flexing up and down to meet ever-changing demands.

Getting an accurate picture of their cloud spend had become very difficult as their cloud infrastructure had become more complex. Despite a broad client base and significant investment into multiple cloud services across AWS, the company received a single monthly invoice offering no insight into what cloud resources were being used and who was using them. This inability to delineate costs and analyze spending made for a hugely complicated client billing process. Moreover, the lack of visibility and control was causing the company’s financial and IT leaders to question the efficiency of their cloud usage and spend.

Solution

Lightstream tailored its service package with the goal of achieving four main objectives for the organization: cloud optimization, in-depth spending visibility, waste management, and cost reduction. They began by negotiating a contract with AWS and the software company to resell its cloud services in order to gain visibility into the organization’s spend and identify opportunities for optimization.

The organization also contracted with Lightstream for its Cloud Managed Services (CMS). Using its proprietary tool Lightstream Connect, Lightstream took a holistic view of the company’s technology spend and performance to gain a clear vision of how the cloud resources were being allocated. Lightstream identified several areas for optimization which would allow the company to take advantage of greater financial savings as well as enhanced operational and security measures.

Since its inception, Lightstream’s experience with organizations of all sizes and across all sectors led its leaders to the understanding that “advanced optics of spend” is a continuous challenge for everyone. In fact, 80% of enterprises struggle with cloud spend management.[i] That’s why the provider developed Lightstream Connect, a system that provides advanced visibility of cloud service usage. From the very simple instance all the way up to a macro pie chart of how a company spends money across AWS services, Lightstream Connect translates bills and tags into data that provides real-time clarity and accountability for consumption. This allows customers to gain a deep understanding of how their budget is being allotted as opposed to the single-line invoice they previously received.

Partnering with Lightstream for CMS has also allowed the company to tap into expertise on the latest and greatest AWS offerings. AWS is constantly adding new capabilities so users can leverage cutting-edge technologies to experiment and innovate more quickly. In addition, AWS frequently modifies its savings plans to offer more flexibility and cost savings for customers. Instead of blindly renewing their cloud services, Lightstream’s procurement team identifies and applies the appropriate new AWS offerings to the organization’s cloud environment in order to deliver the greatest performance, security and efficiency.

Business Outcomes

Lightstream’s in-depth understanding as to which AWS services would deliver the most value for this particular customer has allowed the organization to experience increased flexibility of service usage. When Lightstream first began working with the company, they were less than 10% optimized across their AWS usage. In less than six months, Lightstream has helped the company to achieve 64% cloud optimization, and is continuously working to improve upon that number.

The organization has been saving more than $50,00.00 per month through procurement optimization and waste management, i.e., the identification and elimination of unused services. Lightstream has also applied identity and access management best practices in order to enhance the company’s cloud security.

Once cloud optimization was achieved, Lightstream entered the organization into the AWS Enterprise Discount Program to reduce costs by an additional 10%. Lightstream is in the process of negotiating a private pricing offering that has the potential to cut the organization’s overall spend by an additional $40,000.00 per month over the next three years.

Lightstream directly supports the organization’s C-level executives, meeting with them regularly to report on efficiency enhancements and new opportunities for technical, financial and security optimization. Going forward, Lightstream plans to continually perform security assessments in order to routinely upgrade its configuration, identity and access management, and overall cloud performance.

Contact Information

To learn more about how Lightstream can support and optimize your cloud deployments on major platforms like AWS and Microsoft Azure with technical and operational best practices and cost optimization, visit www.lightstream.tech.


[i] https://www.informationweek.com/cloud/10-tips-for-managing-cloud-costs/d/d-id/1332242

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