High-agility DevOps-focused projects need flexible resourcing. And by subscribing for longer periods, these can be considerably cheaper. Using Reserved Instances (discount billing) can save up to 40% compared to on-demand prices, or spot pricing can be used at a much cheaper rate when suitable.

The challenge is optimising costs by using the most appropriate pricing blend between upfront and on-demand payment methods.

Today, the SRE team continues to monitor and optimise more than £5 million of BT’s assets. Not only controlling EE, but other parts of our estate, like BT Retail’s online storefront and main portal. All for the same amount of money they were spending from the start. Giving them more for less.

However, the benefits to EE go beyond cost savings. They’re also seeing improved performance as a result of adopting a more suitable virtual server instance type. Today, automated remediation of policies avoids zombie assets. For example, whenever disks are spotted that haven’t been used for a week, they’ll automatically be deleted.

Daily reports (called ‘Health Checks’) are sent to all stakeholders for quick assessment, including any security issues. They can see ports that are open to the public or passwords that aren’t set up according to company policy. The SRE team has set up scripting against these reports, so users are sent an automated request if they need to update their machine.

They’ve also set up tagging policies to enforce actions across EE’s estate (supported by custom reports on untagged resources), creating useful centralised visibility on spend. These are also enabling internal chargeback (or showback), enabling internal cost charges to specific departments or projects – driving better accountability within the DevOps teams.

Cloud Cost Optimisation has given EE greater control and streamlined decision-making. While automation, governance, and policies have changed user behaviour – putting costs first. More time can now be spent on value-added products, or in the case of EE, taking on new operational entities. All while keeping costs at the same level as before. It’s a win-win.