A Cloudamize Case Study
About Customer
Equans is a world leader in energies and services. Working in high-growth markets, Equans counts around 84,000 employees in 20 countries and 5 continents. Its long-standing local brands have anchored the company across its geographies and been a key component to energy construction in many countries.
The Challenge
Cost uncertainty is a barrier to entry for many Customers looking to migrate to the cloud, especially when they have workloads with varying capacities and run times. As Equans looked to migrate to the cloud in the most cost effective manner, they worked with Cloudamize to conduct a multi-faceted assessment using DISCOVER, with some unexpected results. While it can be relatively easy to predict costs for a continuously running workload, Equans were not running their servers all of the time. Only 2% of their machines were running 24/7, whereas 75% of their machines were on an average of 18 hours a day, and 16% of their machines were on an average of 14 hours a day.
The Solution
With the results of DISCOVER and ANALYZE, Equans was able to see that Reserved Instance (RI) pricing was not the most cost effective strategy for their environment, and that this was a rare case where instance scheduling for on premises servers was the right answer! Reserved Instance pricing assumes your server will be running 24/7, and for servers that run all of the time this usage commitment is rewarded with lower per hour costs. Using flat-files, or systems with lower data collection resolution, would not accurately catch this nuance. However, Cloudamize’s DISCOVER component boasts live data collection with an industry-leading collection resolution, which enables it to easily & accurately quantify run-time per server for use by its analytics engine.
Upon completion of data collection, the analytics engine within Cloudamize’s ANALYZE component used a unique combination of the various metrics it discovered (e.g. system info, system performance info, application process information, etc.) to automatically expose multiple TCO designs, making it quick and easy to explore the various cost scenarios (e.g. On-Demand vs. 1 YR NURI).
Like Equans, if you are using instance scheduling to turn off machines at the end of the day or over the weekend and then turn them back on based on a schedule, it’ll be apparent within Cloudamize that on-demand pricing might be more cost effective in the long run, even though the per hour cost is more.
The Result
| Cloudamize’s TCO calculations were able to provide Equans a clear savings of ~$20K annually using On-Demand pricing over 1 Year Reserved Instance (No Upfront payment) pricing. While it may go against conventional thinking that Reserved Instance pricing is cheaper than On-Demand in most cases, Cloudamize is able to show situations where that is not the case. Through the use of Cloudamize DISCOVER, ANALYZE, and Pricing Scenarios, Equans was able to optimize their pricing based off of their needs, and save money throughout the year. |
$20K Annual Savings without RI/Savings Plan Commitment |
About Cloudamize
Cloudamize is a global platform designed to automate and accelerate the Cloud Journey. The platform is composed of 6 components (DISCOVER, ANALYZE, PLAN, MIGRATE, MANAGE, & MODERNIZE) which provide a seamless data-driven experience as customers move from Discovery through Migration and into the Cloud. You can leverage the data and insights provided by the Platform to execute an application-centric migration, detailing each of the applications discovered through CMDB-like metadata prior to migrating each application. Or if you’re simply interested in a highly accelerated migration, the platform provides simple server grouping capabilities, enabling you to jump right to the replication process. No matter which approach you take, the Cloudamize Platform provides the flexibility for your team to be successful.
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