Your cloud bill isn't a price list. It's a record of design decisions.

A private university was spending $11,000 a month on an outdated data platform, with engineers busy just keeping it alive.

We rebuilt it on Faro Lighthouse. The bill dropped to $1,700 a month - ~$112k a year back in the budget.

There was no single trick. It was a series of design choices:

• Stop paying for reserved capacity that cost far more than what was actually used.
• Spin environments up only when they're needed - and run fewer of them.
• Load only the data that changed, instead of everything every night.
• Move the heavy processing to an engine that does the same work for less.

None of this was a discount from the vendor. Every line on the old bill was the result of a decision someone made - or never revisited.

That's good news for a CFO: a design decision can be changed. And the team that used to spend its time on maintenance now works on insights.

Three questions worth asking about your own bill:

• What do we pay for, and what do we actually use?
• Who owns this number?
• When did anyone last check the platform design against the invoice?

How does your company keep its data platform costs in check? If you'd like a second pair of eyes on yours, send me a message.

Sources:

• Faro case study: 85% lower data platform costs

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