The average company wastes 32% of its cloud spend on unused or over-provisioned resources (Flexera 2024). For a business spending £5,000/month on AWS, that is £1,600/month in pure waste.
Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
AWS savings options
| Option | Commitment | Savings vs On-Demand |
|---|---|---|
| On-Demand | None | 0% |
| 1-year Reserved (Convertible) | 1 year | ~31% |
| 3-year Reserved (Standard) | 3 years | ~58% |
| Compute Savings Plan | 1-3 years spend | ~20-40% |
Quick Wins (Implement This Week)
- Delete unattached EBS volumes — check EC2 > Volumes > filter "Available"
- Release unassociated Elastic IPs — each costs ~£3/month
- Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering for infrequently accessed data
- Delete old EBS snapshots — use Data Lifecycle Manager
- Enable AWS Trusted Advisor — identifies obvious waste for free
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The 80/20 Rule
Identify your top 3 cost drivers in Cost Explorer (usually EC2, RDS, data transfer) and optimise those first. Reducing an EC2 bill from £3,000 to £1,800/month delivers more value than optimising 12 smaller services.
AWSCost OptimisationCloudFinOpsDevOps
Tanvir Tuhin
AI consultant, digital marketer, and study abroad mentor based in Aberdeen, UK. Founder of JJAT Education.
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