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Cloud Cost Optimization
Cloud cost optimization and FinOps services
Most cloud waste hides in idle resources, forgotten snapshots, chatty logs and traffic nobody priced. Agnotic Technologies finds and removes it on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, without cutting the backups, logs and encryption your audits depend on.
Cost allocationRightsizingCommitmentsGuardrails kept
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Cloud optimisation
What is cloud cost optimization?
Cloud cost optimization is finding and removing waste in your AWS, Azure or Google Cloud bill without weakening security, backups or audit evidence. Agnotic Technologies sets up cost allocation, rightsizes compute, plans commitments, tiers storage and logs, cuts data transfer and NAT charges, and tracks unit cost per customer or transaction.
We do not promise a percentage. Savings depend on how your environment was built, and we report them from your own bill.
Landing zone design is part of cloud consulting, and ongoing operations for healthcare environments are covered by cloud managed services.
Cost review checklist
Which cost drivers do we check first?
Each driver has a way to find it, a usual fix and a guardrail that stays in place whatever the saving.
| Cost driver | How we find it | Usual fix | Guardrail that stays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Idle compute | Low CPU and network use over weeks in monitoring data | Stop, schedule or delete once the owner confirms | Disaster recovery capacity is kept and labelled |
| Oversized instances | Utilization against size in the provider's rightsizing reports | A smaller size or newer generation, then autoscaling | Load test before resizing anything customer facing |
| Unattached volumes and old snapshots | Volumes with no attachment and snapshots past retention | Delete after review, then automate the lifecycle | Backups your retention policy requires are never deleted |
| Log ingestion and retention | Top log sources by ingested volume | Drop debug logs, sample noisy sources, move old logs to cheaper storage | Security and audit logs keep their required retention |
| Cross-zone and internet egress | Data transfer line items by service and zone | Keep chatty services in one zone, add a CDN for public content | Multi-zone availability is not removed to save transfer |
| NAT gateway processing | Bytes processed by source subnet | VPC endpoints for AWS services, one NAT per zone | Private subnets stay private |
| Uncommitted steady load | Hours of steady use over recent months | Savings Plans, reservations or committed use discounts | Commitments sized to the baseline, not the peak |
Guardrails
Which costs must never be cut?
- Audit and security logs your compliance obligations require
- Backups and snapshots inside your retention policy
- Encryption, key management and private networking
- Multi-zone redundancy for systems with an availability commitment
- Monitoring and alerting on production
- Every change logged with its owner and expected saving, so it can be reversed
Cost allocation
How does cost allocation work?
Savings are hard to keep if nobody can see whose spend is whose.
Enforce
- Tag policies in the cloud account
- Checks on infrastructure as code in CI
- A weekly untagged spend report
Allocate
- Shared costs split by usage
- Kubernetes costs by namespace
- Platform costs spread by an agreed key
Report
- Monthly cost by product and environment
- Unit cost per customer or transaction
- Anomaly alerts to the owner
How do commitments work on each provider?
Commitments trade flexibility for a lower rate. We size them to your steady baseline after rightsizing.
AWS Savings Plans
A commitment to an amount of compute usage per hour for one or three years, applied across eligible usage.
AWS Reserved Instances
Reservations for services such as Amazon RDS and Amazon ElastiCache, bought per instance type and Region.
Azure reservations and savings plan
One or three year reservations for VMs, databases and other services, plus the Azure savings plan for compute.
Google Cloud committed use discounts
Resource-based or spend-based commitments for one or three years, in exchange for discounted prices.
Coverage reviews
A monthly check of commitment coverage and use, so unused commitments are caught early.
Unit cost metrics
Cost per customer, per transaction or per environment, built from tags and usage data.
FinOps phases
How does a cost review run?
We follow the FinOps Framework's three phases, and repeat them.
Inform
Tag coverage, cost by product and environment, and a baseline from recent bills.
Optimize
The checklist above, starting with changes that carry no risk, then rightsizing and commitments.
Operate
Budgets, anomaly alerts and a monthly review, so savings stay and new waste is caught.
Who needs cloud cost optimization?
SaaS companies
A cloud bill growing faster than customers, with no view of cost per tenant.
Startups after credits end
Infrastructure set up quickly on credits that now has to pay its own way.
Regulated teams
Healthcare and finance environments where savings must not touch audit logs or backups.
Companies after a lift and shift
Servers moved as they were, still sized for the old data centre.
Multi-cloud teams
Spend across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud reported in one view.
Frameworks
Frameworks behind our cost reviews
FinOps FrameworkFOCUSAWS Well-ArchitectedAzure Well-ArchitectedGoogle Cloud
Facts and sources
Facts behind cloud cost optimization
Billing rules and frameworks from the providers and the FinOps Foundation.
An AWS NAT gateway is charged for each hour it is available and for each gigabyte it processes, and AWS suggests keeping resources in the gateway's Availability Zone and using VPC endpoints to cut that traffic.
Source: Amazon VPC User Guide: pricing for NAT gatewaysAWS Savings Plans give lower rates than On-Demand in exchange for a commitment to an amount of compute usage, measured per hour, for a one or three year term.
Source: AWS Savings Plans User GuideGoogle Cloud committed use discounts provide discounted prices in exchange for committing to a minimum level of resources or a minimum spend for a term of one or three years.
Source: Google Cloud documentation: committed use discountsThe FinOps Framework runs through three iterative phases, Inform, Optimize and Operate, which practitioners cycle through as they review an organization's technology use.
Source: FinOps Foundation: FinOps phasesThe AWS Well-Architected Cost Optimization Pillar is organized around five practice areas: Cloud Financial Management, expenditure and usage awareness, cost-effective resources, managing demand and supply, and optimizing over time.
Source: AWS Well-Architected Framework: Cost Optimization Pillar
Scope
What drives the scope of a cost review?
We do not publish prices. These factors decide the size of the work.
Accounts and providers
How many accounts, subscriptions or projects, on one cloud or several.
Tag coverage
Low coverage means allocation work before any saving can be traced.
Kubernetes
Clusters need cost split by namespace and workload.
Compliance scope
Which logs, backups and controls are fixed by your obligations.
Advise or implement
A findings report, or engineers making the changes in your infrastructure code.
Ongoing reporting
Budgets, alerts and unit cost dashboards after the review.
Frequently Asked Questions
We do not quote a percentage before we see your bill. After the Inform phase, each finding lists its expected monthly saving, calculated from your usage and the provider's current prices.
It depends on the number of accounts, providers and how well resources are tagged. We agree the scope on the scoping call, and quick, risk-free changes usually come first.
It should not. Every change has a guardrail: logs, backups, encryption and redundancy stay as your obligations require, and customer-facing resizes are load tested first.
Rightsize first, then commit. Buying commitments for oversized resources locks in waste. We size commitments to the steady baseline that remains after rightsizing.
Yes. The method is the same on each provider; the commitment types, tools and billing data differ, and we report all of them in one view if you use more than one.
Yes. We set up budgets, anomaly alerts and unit cost reports owned by your team. For healthcare environments run for you month to month, see our cloud managed services.
AI tools may help summarize large billing exports, but every recommended change is checked against usage data and approved by the resource owner before it is made.