As businesses lean heavily on cloud infrastructure to drive innovation, one harsh reality has become evident: cloud waste drains budgets. Underused or idle resources still rack up expenses, turning potential financial advantages into losses. Akamai, a global leader in content delivery and cloud services, faced skyrocketing cloud bills and quickly realized they needed to regain control of their public cloud spending.

Through Project Cirrus, Akamai transformed this challenge into a 40% reduction in cloud costs in just one year. This impressive achievement resulted from a focused and strategic effort to improve cost efficiency and eliminate unnecessary cloud usage.

Akamai embraced automation at the core of their approach. They deployed real-time monitoring tools to right-size cloud resources, ensuring that resources matched actual demand. This real-time flexibility allowed the company to scale up or down as needed, preventing costly overprovisioning.

Furthermore, Akamai took full advantage of Reserved Instances (RIs), securing lower and more predictable pricing. This strategic decision saved the company up to 75% compared to expensive on-demand options.

Akamai also prioritized continuous cloud management. The company implemented a monitoring system to catch inefficiencies and correct them before waste spiraled out of control.

Akamai’s story serves as a crucial reminder for businesses everywhere. In today’s cloud-dependent world, proactively managing cloud costs isn’t just smart—it’s vital for sustainable growth and long-term success.