Significant Cost Savings for Kambi's AWS Infrastructure

In Brief:

• Kambi engaged Redeploy to manage and optimize AWS infrastructure costs, fostering a cost-conscious development culture.
• Our Redeploy Build performed targeted actions within Kambi's AWS infrastructure, implementing strategies that led to significant cost reductions.
• The intervention doubled compute output without raising costs and reduced overall AWS expenses by over 13%.

The Challenge: Managing and Optimizing AWS Infrastructure Costs

Kambi, with a longstanding AWS presence, had traditionally maintained a centrally managed operation of their IT. Seeking evolution, they initiated a shift towards a broader DevOps culture two years ago. As part of this shift, every team assumed responsibility for their components and was given the freedom to spin up needed infrastructure in AWS with little control of cost.

To oversee this new approach, Kambi established a central FinOps team. Despite swiftly identifying several opportunities for cost optimization, they found themselves constrained by time within their development organization. Recognizing the need for external support, Kambi sought a partner to assist with optimization strategies and support their internal team. Following a recommendation from their AWS account manager, Kambi chose to engage Redeploy and our Build team.

"Redeploy's specific and deep knowledge of AWS has been incredibly beneficial for us. Their consultants have not only helped us optimize costs but also fostered a cost-conscious culture among our developers. I'm particularly impressed with their professionality and that they could grasp and act on quite abstract goals, work independently, and ask when required."

– Martin Norum, Head of Engineering Services at Kambi

The Solution: Comprehensive Cost Analysis and System Optimization

We started by embarking on a detailed analysis to identify potential areas for cost reduction within Kambi's AWS infrastructure. Our comprehensive investigation led to the discovery and implementation of several initiatives and strategies that significantly reduced Kambi's operating costs. These cost-reducting initiatives included:

• Transitioning VPC flow logs from CW to S3.
• Modifying io1 to gp3 and removing provisioned iops for compute.
• Changing io1 to gp3 for RDS.
• Optimizing Datalake API requests and modifying the application to perform fewer API requests.
• Implementing lifecycle rules on test buckets in both prod and test environments.
• Adjusting the storage tier on backups.
• Optimized WAF logging. Removed unused logging and moved some to S3 instead of CW.
• Switching to spot instances for the Data Tooling cluster.

These comprehensive yet targeted actions allowed for the fine-tuning of Kambi's AWS infrastructure, resulting in a more cost-effective and streamlined operation.

Results: Improved Operational Efficiency and Cost Reduction

Our intervention enabled Kambi to double its compute output without increasing hourly costs. Kambi also reported substantial savings per terabyte, thanks in part to our efforts. This optimization particularly benefited Kambi's data lake, which consumes a large amount of data.

The cost of their AWS infrastructure was reduced by 13%, enabling Kambi to allocate its resources more efficiently, enhancing its overall operational efficiency.

"Many companies that start using cloud services are not necessarily fully adept in best practices, especially regarding costs. It can be a tough and long journey moving from on-prem infrastructures. With our deep knowledge of AWS services and technologies at Redeploy, we were able to fast-track this process for Kambi. By focusing on the 'low-hanging fruit,' we could make some pretty big cost savings without taking up much of the customer's time."

– Jonas Ahlinder, Senior Cloud Architect at Redeploy Build