The Challenge of Managing a Shared Budget

In 2023, Samtek started helping CCSQ manage their cloud environment. It didn’t take long for our operations team to discover that CCSQ’s single, large enterprise budget strategy faced a common problem for shared budgets. Each ADO (Application Development Organization) saw themselves as just a small part of the overall budget, and so they didn’t have any incentive to reduce the amount of money they were spending.

Our Approach & Solutions

We knew that to get spending under control, we had to get management and technical leads to champion cost savings. Here’s how we did it:

Helping Executives Understand the Problem with Data-Driven Reports & Solutions

We created a KPI dashboard in QuickSight and sent it up the management chain to demonstrate the need for cost-savings measures. We had to get the executive management level on board before we were able to make cost savings a priority.

Identifying Specific Cost Savings Opportunities

After our team analyzed the existing process, we gave them a list of cost-savings opportunities including:

Updating services to the latest version

Using older versions of services drastically increases price. This is because older software versions require older technology to run, and it’s often outside of standard support. To continue to use the older version of a service, an ADO must pay for extended support, which is costly. Updating these services removed the need for extended support and associated charges, resulting in quick cost savings.

Shutting down underutilized resources

Users often forget about servers or storage they have set up in the cloud. These forgotten resources were usually for work that needed to be done quickly, or work associated with projects that are now over. In other words, we just needed to encourage a little housekeeping.  We notified resource owners to see if they were still using certain resources.  More often than not, they were no longer using the services, so we shut them down, resulting in even more cost savings.

Using more cost-effective services

Everyone loves a shiny new toy. Cloud providers are always releasing new services that users are quick to adopt. Then, providers often release a new, cheaper, more efficient version of the software that excludes some unused features. Samtek strives to stay on the cutting edge of new technology, and we used our expertise about new, more cost-effective services to help ADOs switch to cheaper software that still helped them meet their goals.

Optimizing Storage Practices

When storing data on the cloud, it’s important to instate a lifecycle for data to reduce cost. This lifecycle includes storing new or frequently accessed data with the fastest possible access times, while older data is pushed down to cheaper, lower-tier access. By using Storage Lens dashboards, we were able to show CCSQ where ADOs were unnecessarily storing old versions of data. By pushing old data to lower tiers and deleting unneeded data, they were able to reduce overall cloud storage cost significantly.

Reducing Logging Redundancy

The federal government requires that operational data, such as API calls, start-ups, and logins, is logged and stored. While these logs are often kept forever, they don’t need to be. And, often, logs are taken more frequently than needed, leading to duplication and extra cost. For example, logs taken every five minutes have a lot more duplicate data than logs taken every hour. We helped CCSQ determine exactly what ADOs need to log and how frequently. Cleaning up this data and establishing more effective logging saved CCSQ even more money.

Maximizing IT Value with Quarterly Campaign

Once we put these cost-savings measures into place, we wanted to help CCSQ continue to make easy cost savings a priority. To do this, we implemented a quarterly event where we would research easy cost-saving opportunities.  At the meetings, we shared the opportunity, created a Jira ticket for each objective, and assigned them to ADOs. We didn’t just give ADOs more work —we celebrated their successes in cost savings to encourage other ADOs to focus on cost savings.  A little competition can go a long way when it comes to cost savings.

Real Savings

Our work with CCSQ reinforced the adage that less is more. By focusing on ways to streamline and reduce, we watched CCSQ’s savings increase. All in all, Samtek saved CCSQ more than $700,000 between May 2024 and May 2025. This includes:

• Over $60,000 saved annually by implementing retention policies for SnapShot backups
• Almost $16,000 saved monthly by migrating EBS volumes from GP2 to GP3 instance types
• Over $30,000 saved monthly by removing extended support for older versions of RDS
• Almost $9,000 saved monthly by removing underutilized EBS volumes and reducing underutilized EC2 instance usage

Money talks, and these savings are real. Through our work with CCSQ, Samtek developed proven strategies to ensure that cost savings remains a priority at all levels of an organization. At Samtek, we have both the technical knowledge required to find opportunities for cost savings, as well as the organizational savvy required to make sure that savings happen.

How have you shifted accountability to reduce costs? We’d love to see your stories in the comments! If your organization is ready to focus on streamlining operations and saving money while delivering quality services, Samtek is ready to help you succeed. Reach out to discuss how we can help you!