At CloudZero, we consider ourselves “customer zero.”
Naturally, our own platform forms the backbone of our cloud cost savings strategy. And before releasing any new feature, we try it out ourselves to see how well it helps us manage our own SaaS costs. If it works well for us, that means there’s already one satisfied user in the world — and there will likely be more!
Take a look at this illuminating interview with Bill Buckley, our Senior Vice President of Engineering, for a behind-the-scenes look at how CloudZero saves money using our own platform.
In meticulous engineer fashion, he dives into the details with enthusiasm, explaining some specific examples of how CloudZero has benefited from being on the cutting edge of SaaS cost tracking and optimization.
If you have the time, do yourself a favor and give the full video a listen. It’s packed with information you can use to harness CloudZero’s cost savings techniques in your own business.
If you need just the highlights, you can find them below.
5 Ways CloudZero Uses Our Own Platform To Find Substantial Cloud Cost Savings
1. We’ve found unit cost visibility to be a game-changer for making sure cost growth is healthy growth
When a SaaS company grows and does well, costs tend to climb from month to month because business is booming. However, when a SaaS company isn’t performing optimally because of some inefficiencies here and there, costs also tend to climb from month to month.
Analyzing costs on a per-unit basis (think costs for a particular customer or a specific feature) allows us to see the where, why, and how much behind each cost increase.
Anyone can take a look at their cloud bill and see that costs went up by 10%. Because we use our own platform, CloudZero can determine if that 10% increase is due to healthy growth, for example from several new customers signing on, or if it stems from a problem with our infrastructure.
2. Advanced anomaly identification helps our engineers identify early when their actions have had unintended cost consequences
Typically, SaaS companies begin to investigate what might have gone wrong when they receive a cloud bill that is far higher than expected.
This investigation may or may not turn up anything useful; it is, after all, happening weeks after the unidentified “something” went awry, and without detailed cost tracking, the company might not have the resources to identify the problem.
CloudZero focuses on finding these problems as they happen, so engineers can prevent the financial bleeding before it shows up on next month’s cloud bill. For an example of when this anomaly detection feature saved us big time, check out the full video at the 7:45 timestamp.
3. Using the data visible on our Dimensions dashboards, we found a way to save a million dollars per year without sacrificing functionality
CloudZero once ran into a problem where we were spending exorbitant amounts to run large data sets for our customers multiple times per day. Our customers valued the data highly and were more than happy to pay for their own usage, but the costs on our end were still too steep at the end of the month.
We were able to take a look at our resource usage, our per-unit costs, and our customer data and realize that the customers using this data needed access to it maybe twice a day. In contrast, we were running the data set six times per day.
We were easily able to scale back on the number of times we ran the data, saving about $1 million annually in the process, and still go above and beyond meeting our customers’ needs.
4. Engineering-led optimization is one of the core tenets we teach at CloudZero, using this strategy saved us another quarter of a million per year
Cutting-edge technologies like AI and machine learning rack up cloud costs quickly. Most companies accept high prices as the cost of doing business in the modern world.
However, if you look closely, you can sometimes find creative ways to save money. And when engineers are responsible for their own cost contributions — as they are with engineering-led optimization — it encourages them to use their abundant creativity to look for the most optimal scenarios possible.
For example, CloudZero once saved $250,000 per year with a week’s worth of work into customizing the way our databases send queries.
5. When the platform spotted some inefficiencies in our code, a single observant engineer saved us an extra $150,000 per year with some web app optimizations
When clients access our live web app, they consume some amount of resources. The resources used vary by client — some are minimal users whereas others place much larger requests.
Despite this, we started out by running each client request through the same infrastructure. This was a simple solution, but it introduced inefficiencies that were driving our costs up.
After taking a look at the data behind our live web app, one of our CloudZero engineers was able to match client queries to the appropriately-sized solution for their needs. This resulted in about $150,000 less in overhead for us every year.
In Short, Our CloudZero Platform Allows Us To Innovate Profitably (And It Can Do The Same For You!)
When unidentified costs are eating into your margins, it’s hard to keep innovating and improving with every new feature release. You’ll be spending your time tracking down the reasons why your cloud bill has snowballed rather than focusing on providing amazing value for your customers.
CloudZero allows SaaS companies to avoid playing catch-up with costs. We identify those red flags early on and provide the context for exactly what needs to change to get back on track toward healthy growth.
For details on this concept of profitable innovation — along with a wealth of valuable information, tips, and anecdotes on maximizing cost savings — we highly recommend watching the full video above.
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