For over a decade, the “cloud-first” approach has dominated IT strategy, promising unparalleled scalability and ease of use, and proving to be a revolutionary force for innovation, particularly for startups. However, this strategy is now “breaking budgets”, with organizations often spending “2-5x more than necessary on infrastructure”. Research indicates that a significant “20-30% of all cloud spending is wasted” due to factors like over-provisioning, idle resources, suboptimal service selection, and punitive data egress fees.

The Problem: Dukaan, a fast-growing e-commerce platform, was a model cloud user. They leveraged the scalability of their cloud provider to grow rapidly. However, this growth came with an astronomical price tag. Their cloud bills were soaring to unsustainable levels with their peak at $90,000 per month, eating directly into their margins. Performance, particularly for their databases, was also a concern due to the inherent limitations of virtualized disk I/O.