Challenge
As a start-up company, the key problem for Failbetter was keeping costs down and optimising their current cloud procurement strategy. The on-demand costs of cloud were proving too high and this was an area that Strategic Blue was able to provide their expertise to, unlocking savings that were otherwise not possible.
Failbetter did not have the time or resources to manage this themselves and reached out to Strategic Blue due to their managed service cost optimisation.
Results
The outcome to Failbetter Games is that through Strategic Blue’s most recent Subscriptions, this has saved Failbetter $6,000 on their cloud spend, a substantial amount for an agile start-up.
Through face-to-face meetings and introductions to our Solution Architects, the Failbetter Games architecture has become more efficient and modernised with the inclusion of two changes across their architectural portfolio. For example, Failbetter has upgraded C4 resources to C5 and r3.4xlarge to r5d.4xlarge – decreasing costs even further.
The next step for the relationship is to continue the good work that has taken place over the last nine years. This includes additional cost savings, adapting the partnership so Strategic Blue can help in additional ways and to watch Failbetter Games continue their exciting growth and product releases in the indie game market.
Solution
The first step for Strategic Blue was to understand the Failbetter situation in full. As experts in the financial part of cloud, Strategic Blue analysed Failbetter’s current cloud usage. Through the Data Discovery, a tool used for cloud usage analysis and recommendations, Strategic Blue was able to present Failbetter Games with areas for financial savings through offering Subscriptions. Through committing to Strategic Blue Subscriptions, Failbetter Games was able to save from the on-demand cost of cloud usage and also received a managed service for their cloud portfolio. Taking the time and effort off of the Failbetter Games team’s shoulders.
Strategic Blue conducted regular meetings with Failbetter Games’ key points of contact, allowing for both sides to work toward greater optimisation and savings for the future. The Strategic Blue analytics and managed service also picks up on anything that is ‘unusual’ within a customers cloud usage. Strategic Blue highlighted that one of the resources that Failbetter Games had a Subscription against was being under-utilised, highlighting wastage where this would perhaps have been overlooked.
In addition, when this Subscription got renewed Failbetter Games was able to make a more accurate quantity, ensuring no wastage. The relationship has progressed to what can only be described as a next chapter, where the Solution Architects of Strategic Blue are working closely with Failbetter Games to assist with recommendations, resource upgrades and highlighting future AWS products of interest. This has demonstrated an added value that will help Failbetter Games maintain its growth whilst also keeping costs down.