Streamlining Operations & Optimizing Cloud Costs: Lightstorm’s Success Story

Streamlining the Lightstorm Cloud Journey

Lightstorm had earlier successfully initiated their cloud journey by moving to AWS cloud. With a robust multi-account cloud environment in place, it was now ready to shift gears. The focus? Scaling and optimizing their cloud journey to maximize efficiency and manage costs across this complex, multi-account landscape.

The team wanted to enhance their cloud utilization for long-term success, using automation and FinOps for a more efficient solution that would allow the company to thrive in the cloud. With comprehensive managed services, in-house resources would be freed up to focus on core business areas while still ensuring compliance and security.

“Our cloud infrastructure forms the backbone of our business and we rely heavily on it to continue to offer seamless solutions to our clients. As we geared up for new business goals and growth plans, we recognized the need to use our existing infrastructure effectively and reduce wasteful expenditure. With their expertise in cloud transformation, Cloud Kinetics was our obvious choice to tackle this.”
Atul Bhandarkar, Chief Information Officer, Lightstorm

Optimizing the cloud journey with automation, security & FinOps

Cloud Kinetics closely analyzed the Lightstorm infrastructure and recommended ways to optimize operations and get to the next level on their cloud journey.

• Automation and AWS Landing Zone were used to create a secure, multi-account AWS environment based on AWS Well-architected best practices.
• AWS Control Tower offered an efficient way to set up and govern a secure, multi-account AWS environment.
• AWS Landing Zone was used to automate the environment for running secure and scalable workloads.

“We have been able to streamline Lightstorm’s operations with smart automation and by closely monitoring and managing their cloud infrastructure. The bedrock of our approach is a FinOps-backed solution with transparency, data management and communication with the client at its heart.”
Joe Francis, MD – India, Cloud Kinetics

Based on its expertise in FinOps and an understanding of Lightstorm operations, the Cloud Kinetics team suggested the following:

• Usage optimization: The Cloud Kinetics team recommended a list of infrastructure solutions that would help right size to correctly utilize the under/over-utilized instances.
• Managing idle instances: Instances that were in the idle state for over 30 days were identified as potential candidates for deletion or improved management.
• Managing orphaned volumes/AMIs: Orphaned volumes and AMIs that were unattached to any resources were identified. These could be deleted to avoid unnecessary costs.
• EC2 saving plan enablement: A saving plan was suggested for one of the customer’s accounts running in Ondemand. Opting for the EC2 saving plan would help bring down costs further.

Cloud Kinetics also implemented robust security measures to protect the cloud environment from threats. The solutions built in compliance with industry regulations and standards related to data protection and privacy. The team also put in place regular backups and testing recovery procedures to minimize downtime.

AWS-backed, FinOps-optimized: Delivering results for Lightstorm

“The Cloud Kinetics team has helped us improve operational efficiency and slashed time, effort, and cost associated with managing multiple AWS accounts. With Cloud Kinetics actively overseeing our digital infrastructure as our managed services partner, we expect to see continued impact as we drive business growth.”
Krishna Basudevan, Head of Enterprise Architecture

When Lightstorm moved all workloads to AWS, it helped support its growing business needs. As the consumption rose, the environment has also scaled.

Lightstorm clocked 10% savings on AWS spending almost immediately, with a cost saving of $40K on cloud spend for the whole year.

• Implementing automation tools and workflows to streamline cloud operations and reduce manual tasks has helped free up manpower internally while ensuring optimal performance and availability.
• Rightsizing instances, utilizing reserved instances, and optimizing storage have helped cut unnecessary spending – they clocked 10% savings on AWS spending almost immediately, with a cost saving of $40K on cloud spend for the whole year.
• With the FinOps implementations, Lightstorm now has a single pane of glass view into their cloud spending. This comprehensive dashboard reveals how much is being spent, what it is being spent on, and who is spending it, empowering the team to collaborate and optimize cloud expenses across the organization.
• Cloud Kinetics also provides 24/7 continuous monitoring of the cloud environment to detect and resolve issues promptly.

“Unexpected spikes in cloud usage, lack of cost controls, and even inefficient resource management can cause budget overruns. Our cloud managed services helped identify these problem areas and put systems in place that allow us to retain agility and flexibility for the client while ensuring optimized cloud costs.”
Gajendra Kumar, Senior Director, Cloud Managed Services, Cloud Kinetics

By implementing comprehensive managed services and FinOps with Cloud Kinetics, Lightstorm could ensure ongoing compliance, security and seamless functioning of its infrastructure, while empowering their team to focus on strategic priorities.

Partnering for the future

With a deep understanding of the client’s business and operations as well as cloud infrastructure, Cloud Kinetics is able to support active management and optimization for Lightstorm. Plans include goals to build a testing Center of Excellence (CoE) as well as implement Application Performance Monitoring (APM). This will offer increased visibility and intelligence into the performance of business applications.

“Working with Cloud Kinetics has helped us seamlessly navigate the complexities of cloud management. We have been able to tap into their FinOps and CloudOps expertise to optimize costs and build a sustainable model for our digital infrastructure. We look forward to their digital support as we move forward with our growth plans.”
Lalit Chowdhary, CTIO, Lightstorm