Industry: SaaS / Technology Platform
Engagement Type: AWS Cloud Security & Cost Optimisation
Focus Areas: Cost Reduction, Security Hardening, Monitoring & Governance

The Challenge

As cloud usage scaled, the customer’s AWS environment began experiencing rapidly increasing costs and security governance gaps. Infrastructure had grown organically over time, resulting in underutilized compute resources, unused storage, and limited visibility into real-time usage patterns.

In parallel, security controls lacked consistency, with risks related to IAM access, security group configurations, and public-facing storage. Without proactive action, these challenges posed a risk of uncontrolled cloud spend, security exposure, and operational inefficiency.

This engagement was delivered for an SMB SaaS customer that required rapid cost control, improved security governance, and operational visibility without increasing cloud management overhead.

Discovery

DevOps TechLab conducted a comprehensive discovery and assessment phase to evaluate the customer’s AWS environment. The discovery focused on:

– Analysis of AWS billing trends and cost drivers
– Review of EC2 utilization and storage consumption
– Identification of unused snapshots, unattached volumes, and stopped instances
– Security posture assessment covering IAM users, security groups, and S3 access
– Evaluation of monitoring and alerting gaps

This phase helped identify high-impact optimization and security opportunities without disrupting production workloads.

Onboarding

Following discovery, the customer was onboarded into a structured optimization and governance workflow:

– Defined a clear scope focused on cost optimisation and security improvements
– Established change validation and approval processes
– Aligned recommendations with AWS Well-Architected Framework best practices
– Planned phased execution to minimize operational risk

Operations & Support

During implementation, DevOps TechLab provided controlled execution and operational support:

– Cleanup of unused EBS snapshots and unattached volumes
– Removal of stopped and unused EC2 instances
– EC2 right-sizing based on actual utilization and AWS Compute Optimizer insights
– Implementation of AWS Savings Plans for eligible workloads
– Deployment of monitoring using Prometheus and Grafana
– Alerting integration for proactive operational awareness

All changes were validated before and after execution to ensure production stability.

Optimisation & Advisory

Beyond implementation, DevOps TechLab delivered continuous advisory support:

– Ongoing cost governance guidance using AWS-native tools
– Recommendations for storage lifecycle policies and long-term archival
– Security assessment reports highlighting IAM risks, public access exposure, and misconfigurations
– Enablement of AWS Inspector for vulnerability scanning
– Advisory roadmap for future security and governance enhancements

This ensured sustainable cost savings and improved security posture over time.

Architecture Overview

The optimized AWS architecture leveraged existing services without requiring major redesign:

– EC2 workloads optimized for performance and cost efficiency
– Amazon S3 used for logs and application data with lifecycle policies
– AWS Savings Plans and Compute Optimizer supporting cost efficiency
– AWS CloudTrail and VPC Flow Logs providing audit and traffic visibility
– Prometheus and Grafana enabling centralized monitoring and alerting

The architecture emphasized cost control, security visibility, and operational observability.

Outcome

As a result of this engagement, the customer achieved:

– Significant recurring AWS cost savings through targeted optimisation
– Improved visibility into infrastructure utilization and spending patterns
– Strengthened AWS security posture and vulnerability awareness
– Proactive monitoring and alerting for operational stability
– Alignment with AWS Well-Architected best practices for cost optimization and security
– Achieved recurring AWS cost reduction in the range of 25–40% through targeted optimisation
– Reduced unused and idle resource footprint significantly within the first optimisation cycle
– Improved detection of operational and security issues from reactive to proactive monitoring

These improvements enabled the organization to scale its AWS environment with greater confidence, predictability, and control.

AWS Best Practices Applied

– Cost Optimization: Right-sizing, Savings Plans, lifecycle policies
– Security: IAM review, Inspector, access exposure mitigation
– Operational Excellence: Monitoring, alerting, governance workflows
– Reliability: Controlled change execution and validation

About DevOps TechLab

DevOps TechLab is an AWS consulting and cloud optimisation company helping SMBs and fast-growing organizations build secure, scalable, and cost-efficient AWS environments. With deep expertise in AWS security, cost governance, and monitoring, DevOps TechLab delivers measurable business outcomes through structured cloud consulting engagements.