SAIC Lowers Cloud One Customer's Operational Costs
Reserved-instance, savings-plan approach to buying cloud computing resources results in cost reductions
Cloud One is the premiere, trusted enterprise cloud for the Department of Defense, managed by the Air Force. A multi-cloud, multi-vendor ecosystem, Cloud One is a one-stop shop for DOD mission application owners that require a full array of commercial cloud services, delivering speed, scale and security with cutting-edge technologies, approaches and solutions for cloud computing. SAIC is the Air Force's industry partner on Cloud One, working continually with DOD customers and cloud service providers (CSPs) on delivering mission system analyses and migrations, state-of-the-art and secure computing environments, standardized platforms and optimized managed services.
Recently, SAIC's management of a mission application owner's cloud services on Cloud One achieved 15% savings on compute and storage requirements through resource and cost optimization with the aid of our cloud management platform. Using the platform to track and analyze the computing usage and patterns of the mission application owner's end users, we recommended a move from on-demand purchases of cloud resources to a predetermined, strategic approach that leveraged prepaid savings programs and discount pricing plans called reserved instances from CSPs.
Challenge
Our customer requires secure cloud-based mission systems, including applications and compute and storage resources, to be delivered as-a-service to end users. These are hosted on Cloud One via the customer's multi-cloud environment consisting of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure government clouds. Budget constraints and tightened funding for the customer drove SAIC to look for continuous ways to contain costs while maintaining high service quality for end users.
Solution
To make continuous improvements possible, SAIC tailored and implemented our CloudScend Management Platform to manage the customer's multi-cloud environment. The platform integrates daily management of operations, security, billing and compliance through a single portal. Its visualization tools allow us to easily monitor computing usage and charges for the customer.
In elastic cloud computing, CSPs provision compute and storage resources to end users each instance they are needed, and charge an on-demand, "pay-as-you-go" price each time. When utilization over time becomes predictable, cloud customers know how much resources they will need and can reserve them ahead with the CSPs for a discounted per-instance price. CSP savings plans similarly offer lower rates for prepaid cloud resources in exchange for commitments to use them within a period of time.
Using the CloudScend Management Platform's dashboards to analyze resource usage at the level of each mission application, and partnering with Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle, SAIC implemented the use of reserved instances and savings plans for the customer's cloud workloads. SAIC recommended to the mission system owner the best times to purchase optimal amounts of reserved instances and when to use savings plans. Data-driven analysis helped the customer make informed buying decisions in balance with funding and other mission considerations.
Benefits
This financial optimization activity netted cost savings and enabled the customer to redirect funds toward the modernization and migration of additional mission applications and systems to be hosted on its Cloud One environment.
SAIC CloudScend Management Platform is a commercial offering for any organization seeking to manage its cloud environment more effectively. The platform is part of our CloudScend Operate group of modular cloud tools, technologies and managed services.
At the core of CloudScend Operate, we maintain close partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other CSPs and can influence how their cloud platforms evolve to meet Cloud One customer needs. We also continuously monitor operating conditions and make recommendations that improve efficiency, performance, spend and mission decisions for cloud system owners.
For more information on SAIC CloudScend, visit our Cloud page.
For more information on Cloud One, click here.