The client faced escalating cloud costs for its applications hosted on the Microsoft Azure platform. Monthly bills had surged to over $100K, with costs continuing to rise month-on-month. With growing business demands, the client needed to optimize its cloud spend, eliminate inefficiencies, and ensure long-term cost control without compromising performance or scalability. 

Orion approached the challenge with a holistic strategy. We began by deploying the OI ARIES platform to enhance visibility and accountability for the client’s cloud spend. This provided a comprehensive view of cost drivers, allowing Orion to make informed decisions for cost optimization.  

Next, we implemented governance and tagging policies along with automation tools to ensure ongoing optimization of cloud costs. These measures helped the client sustain cost benefits over time, with an emphasis on both short-term wins and long-term strategies. 

Collaborating closely with application owners, Orion identified quick wins and envisioned a roadmap for both short-term and long-term improvements. Short-term actions included right-sizing resources, leveraging discounted pricing, decommissioning unused resources, and shifting premium snapshots to standard disks.  

Long-term plans focused on scalability and efficiency, including the implementation of auto-scaling for applications, setting up a DevOps pipeline, creating a backup strategy, and introducing spot solutions and automation runbooks tailored to the client’s unique needs. We also recommended modernizing cloud services and right-sizing resources based on usage trends.  

To prevent future cost leakages, Orion established monitoring and alerting systems, ensuring the client could maintain control of their cloud environment and spending. 

Following Orion’s cloud cost optimization efforts, the client achieved significant financial and operational benefits:

• Approximately $20K per month in cloud cost savings.
• A mature FinOps practice implemented to drive visibility and accountability in spending.
• An optimized cloud environment now supported by strong cost governance.
• Improved visibility, sustainability, and financial control over cloud usage and ongoing expenses.