FinOps
Cloud cost optimization
Cloud bills grow quietly: oversized instances, test environments running overnight, disks left behind by deleted servers, and traffic nobody measured. A proper optimization round finds that money and gives it back, without touching stability.
Where the money usually is
Oversized instances
most cloud servers run at 10–20% utilisation. Right-sizing by measurement, not by feel.
Environments that never sleep
development and test running 24/7 instead of working hours — an immediate saving of about two thirds.
Forgotten storage
old snapshots, detached volumes and logs with no retention policy.
Commitment plans
Savings Plans and Reserved Instances on the steady baseline only, so you never over-commit.
Data transfer
cross-region and egress traffic, often a surprising share of the bill.
Ongoing visibility
resource tagging, reports per team or client, and budgets that alert before month end.
How it works
- 1Account review — analysis of 30–90 days of billing by service, environment and tag.
- 2Findings report — a ranked list of actions by monthly saving against risk and effort.
- 3Safe changes first — what can be done with no risk — deletions, overnight shutdown, retention policies.
- 4Measured changes — right-sizing and architecture changes, one at a time, each monitored afterwards.
- 5Keep it that way — budgets, alerts and tagging so the bill does not creep back.
A real result
A FinOps project at a previous employer cut monthly AWS spend by roughly 35%, mostly through right-sizing, shutting down unused environments and storage policies. Results depend on the starting point: a tidy account yields less, an account that grew fast usually yields more.
Related
- AWS cloud services — an environment built properly costs less from the start.
- Kubernetes — autoscaling that lowers cost without hurting performance.
- Cloud migration — optimization begins right after the move.
- NAT Gateway: the bill line nobody looks at — a worked example of a cost that accumulates quietly.
Frequently asked questions
- How much can we save?
- It depends on the starting point. For accounts never optimised, 20 to 40 percent is realistic. For an account already in good shape the saving is smaller, and that will be said up front.
- Will it hurt performance?
- Not when it is done by measurement. Each change is made separately and monitored, and anything risky is deferred or dropped. Stability comes before saving.
- How is the work priced?
- An optimization round is priced as a fixed-scope project, not as a percentage of the saving, so there is no incentive to inflate the numbers.
- How long does it take?
- A findings report is usually ready within a week. Implementing the safe changes takes another week or two; larger architectural changes are planned separately.
Tell me what you are running today
A short call, then a written plan with a cost estimate and a fixed scope. No obligation.