Evestor - Azure Optimisation Case Study
Azure optimisation

Evestor - Azure Optimisation Case Study

Portfolio management company enjoys 1638% ROI over 3 years with Azure assessment - Evestor

“We never imagined it was possible to achieve this sort of return. And with the level of insight provided by Atech, our business is now fit for the future.” – David Kilburn, Chief Operating Officer, Evestor
 

evestor engaged the specialist in Azure optimisation, Atech, to assess its environment and provide recommendations on how to best optimise its existing infrastructure, while dramatically reducing costs.
 

evestor is different. A portfolio management service aimed at investors of all ages and experience, evestor is making investing simple and affordable for everyone. Using technology, it keeps its offering simple and easy, while passing on any cost savings to its customers.

 

Problem

When its funding expired, and the high bills for the Azure platform kept rolling in, the management team started to question whether the platform was over provisioned for the company’s requirements.

 

Expectations

  • Simple explanation of the technical environment
  • Correctly provisioned from a resource and instance standpoint
  • 400% ROI

 

Results

  • Peace-of-mind that the environment is compliant and fit-for-purpose
  • 32% cost-saving, equal to nearly £30k per year
  • 1638% ROI

 

evestor’s ambition to change and simplify the way people invest, by leveraging modern technology to help them take control of their portfolio, earned the company lucrative ‘Start Up’ credits from Microsoft, worth $250k.
 

Its in-house team started to spin up a server in the cloud, which it believed was fit-for-purpose. It comprised hosted IaaS and PaaS infrastructure, which was located across the globe, including Azure web applications, VM scale sets, Azure storage accounts, Azure SQL DBaaS and multiple native Azure monitoring solutions (Application Insights/OMS).
 

Then a series of events kick-started evestor to start questioning whether its existing infrastructure had them set up for future success:

  • There were ambitious growth plans to create a modern workplace that enabled them to scale.
  • An outage occurred, caused by a storage account becoming full.
  • Microsoft’s funding ceased, leaving the company with ongoing bills exceeding £9k per month.

 

Suspecting it was over provisioned, evestor engaged the specialist in Azure optimisation, Atech, to assess its environment and provide recommendations on how to best optimise its existing infrastructure, while dramatically reducing costs.

 

Optimising Azure

Atech’s assessment comprises 3 key elements:

  • Business assessment: to understand evestor’s business today alongside its plans for growth and the regulatory environment in which it operates.
  • Technology assessment: to review performance over a 30-day sample period to determine whether its infrastructure was fit-for-purpose.
  • Practical reporting: including conclusions, evidenced recommendations and indicative cost savings.

 

Atech’s holistic business assessment reviews these factors:

  • Configuration of Application Insights, OMS/Log Analytics, SQL Databases, Web Applications and Storage Accounts.
  • Current governance
  • Current performance metrics
  • Current spend
  • Backup and disaster recovery procedures

 

Atech’s technology assessment reviews these, and more:

  • VM scale sets
  • Storage accounts
  • SQL databases
  • Application insights
  • Web applications
  • Overall governance
  • OMS/Log analytics

 

Scraping the appropriate data and APIs, Atech was able to determine impressive potential savings simply by scaling-in, scaling-down and resizing elements of evestor’s existing infrastructure:

  • Service fabric clusters: 43% saving by downsizing
  • Virtual machines: 53% saving by resizing
  • Disks: 56% saving by downgrading
  • SQL databases: 67% saving by resizing

 

These savings could all be achieved without affecting service performance. The only element where no action was required was against the Storage Accounts, since the cost accounted for 1% of the total bill and therefore any changes would have little impact.
 

“I’d always suspected that we weren’t operating as efficiently as we could be, but without the technical knowledge I was always unsure of how to gain this insight. I’m very grateful that Atech was able to perform such a thorough assessment of our business requirements and explain the technical findings in such simple terms. Now we know how to optimise our operations and modernise the business.” – David Kilburn, COO, Evestor
 

Azure optimisation brings 1638% ROI over 3 years

When presenting its findings to the management team, Atech explained the proposed changes simply, while highlighting the security risks, compliance considerations and the wider business impact.
 

Overall, Atech calculated that evestor would achieve a 32% cost saving on its Azure environment, which equated to nearly £30k per year.
 

When considered alongside Microsoft best practices and governance of the environment, over a 3-year term, Evestor could expect to see an incredible 1638% ROI.
 

ROI Calculator
 

Above: Calculator indicating the potential for evestor to achieve 1638% ROI through its cost optimisation assessment
 

“We have an impressive technical team in-house, but it’s hard to be an expert in everything. As Atech has proved, it’s worth inviting a cloud specialist in because they see your world through fresh eyes and uncover things you didn’t even realise were causing you an issue.” – David Kilburn, COO, Evestor
 

How does your environment measure up?

 

If you’re preparing for the modern workplace and want to check that your Azure environment is fit-for-purpose, sign up for an Atech Assessment.
 

Typically, the assessment delivers a 400% ROI over a 3-year term, based on identifying savings where the infrastructure provision can be downsized or resized without affecting the service performance.
 

Take an assessment with us and find out what savings you could realise.
 

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