Optimizing Cloud Costs for Noverstock's Multichannel Sync Platform

Noverstock is a bulgarian startup company which is developing a platform for multi-channel sync for e-commerce.
Their platform allows their clients to have a centralized location where they can perform all of their operations related to their e-commerce solutions.

Services

Our services and deliverables

• Our expert team at 1Crew partnered with Noverstock to address their cloud cost optimization challenges. We offered a range of services, including:
• Discovery of the Current Cloud Solution: In-depth analysis of Noverstock's existing cloud infrastructure, focusing on strategies, implementations, and opportunities for optimization.
• FinOps Audit of the Current Cloud Solution: A comprehensive financial operations (FinOps) audit to evaluate Noverstock's cloud expenditure, identify cost drivers, and provide recommendations for improvement.

We used

• AWS
• RDS 
• ECS
• EC-2
• CloudWatch
• Cost Explorer

The Challenge 

Effective cloud cost optimization significantly impacts a business by minimizing unnecessary expenses, freeing up resources for innovation and growth. It ensures financial efficiency, enabling better allocation of funds for strategic initiatives and improving overall competitiveness.
Understanding and optimizing cloud spend. Noverstock is paying an average of 4200$ per month and is experiencing difficulties in investigating the costs that occur in his monthly bill. Monthly spend is quite high for a company at their size and the current infrastructure they have. The client wanted to get information and suggestions about how to separate costs per environment, per service, rightsize, optimize and monitor his cloud infrastructure following the best practices.

Solution

We crafted a holistic solution tailored to Noverstock's needs:

‍

• Snapshot of Current Cloud Infrastructure: This included assessing environments, implementing tagging and cost allocation strategies, and collecting performance and usage metrics.‍
• Investigating Cost Generators: We delved deep into the elements contributing to Noverstock's cloud costs.‍
• Optimization Actions: We devised a series of optimization actions aligned with the AWS Well-Architected Framework and FinOps principles.‍
• Detailed Audit Report: We presented a comprehensive audit report outlining findings, recommendations, and best practices from the FinOps Foundations and Practices.

Result

• Improvement areas were found in the main services that are used by Noverstock - RDS, ECS, EC-2 which are seen from cost optimization perspective.
• Taking into consideration and implementing the recommendations can result in substantial cost reductions of up to 50%, improved operational efficiency and better cost observability.
• Report was shared and presented to the client which gives the client the opportunity to take immediate actions in order to improve and optimize the infrastructure.
• Discussion upon next steps working together though the “FinOps journey” which means  preparing optimization plan and implementation.

By addressing these concerns, we aim to continue empowering Noverstock on their path to optimizing their cloud infrastructure, enhancing their financial efficiency, and enabling their strategic growth initiatives.