AWS CloudOps & IaC Case Study: 40% Cost Reduction for Israeli SaaS Company
Complete infrastructure transformation with Terraform, automated deployments, and comprehensive CloudOps management
An Israeli B2B SaaS company was struggling with rapidly increasing AWS costs, manual infrastructure management, and frequent production incidents. HostingX implemented a comprehensive AWS CloudOps solution with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), automated CI/CD pipelines, and 24/7 managed services, achieving 40% cost reduction, 99.9% uptime, and 10x faster deployments within 3 months.
Project Snapshot
CLIENT
Fast-growing B2B SaaS company (50-200 employees)
LOCATION
Tel Aviv, Israel
INDUSTRY
SaaS / Enterprise Software
DURATION
3 months implementation + ongoing managed services
SERVICES
• AWS CloudOps & Managed Services
• Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
• CI/CD Pipeline Automation (GitHub Actions)
• 24/7 Monitoring & Incident Response
• Cost Optimization & FinOps
• Security & Compliance (SOC 2 prep)
TECH STACK
KEY RESULTS
40% reduction in monthly AWS costs ($15K → $9K)
10x faster deployments (2 days → 2 hours)
99.9% uptime (from 97.5%)
80% reduction in manual operations
Zero security incidents
SOC 2 compliance readiness achieved
About the Client
Our client is a rapidly growing Israeli B2B SaaS platform providing analytics and data visualization tools to enterprise customers across Europe and North America. With annual recurring revenue exceeding $10M and ambitious growth targets, they needed enterprise-grade infrastructure reliability and scalability. Their engineering team of 25 developers was spending more time fighting infrastructure fires than building product features. As a compliance-focused business serving Fortune 500 clients, they needed robust security controls and audit trails to achieve SOC 2 certification.
Challenges
Skyrocketing AWS Costs
Monthly AWS bill had grown from $5K to $15K in 6 months without corresponding growth in revenue or users. No cost visibility, over-provisioned resources, and inefficient architecture.
Pain Points:
• No cost attribution per customer or feature
• Production databases running 24/7 on oversized instances
• Development environments never shut down
• No Reserved Instances or Savings Plans
• Unoptimized data transfer and storage costs
Manual Infrastructure Management
All infrastructure changes were done manually through AWS Console. No version control, no reproducibility, and significant drift between environments.
Pain Points:
• Production deployments took 2-3 days with manual checklists
• Environment configuration drift caused mysterious bugs
• Onboarding new developers took weeks
• Disaster recovery was untested and undocumented
• Compliance audits revealed gaps in change tracking
Frequent Production Incidents
Weekly production incidents and outages were damaging customer trust and SLA compliance. No observability, reactive firefighting, and weekend escalations.
Pain Points:
• Average 2.5% monthly downtime (97.5% uptime)
• Mean Time To Recovery (MTTR) of 4+ hours
• No proactive monitoring or alerting
• On-call engineers burned out from frequent pages
• Customers complaining about reliability
Security & Compliance Gaps
Preparing for SOC 2 audit revealed significant security and compliance gaps. Manual processes, no audit trails, and inconsistent security controls.
Pain Points:
• Secrets stored in plaintext in repositories
• No centralized IAM management
• Incomplete logging and audit trails
• No automated vulnerability scanning
• Manual security patching falling behind
Goals
Reduce AWS costs by 30-40% without impacting performance
Implement FinOps best practices, rightsize resources, optimize data transfer, and establish cost accountability per team and customer.
Achieve 99.9% uptime and sub-30-minute MTTR
Build reliable, self-healing infrastructure with comprehensive observability and automated incident response.
Codify all infrastructure and enable self-service deployments
Migrate to Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, establish GitOps workflows, and enable developers to deploy safely without DevOps intervention.
Prepare for SOC 2 Type II certification
Implement security controls, audit trails, and compliance automation required for SOC 2 certification within 6 months.
HostingX Solution
1. Assessment & Architecture Design
HostingX conducted a comprehensive 2-week assessment of the existing AWS environment, analyzing account structure, VPC networking, compute and database utilization, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring gaps, security posture, and cost allocation. We identified $6K/month in immediate cost savings opportunities and designed a target architecture featuring multi-account AWS organization, Terraform-managed infrastructure, EKS-based application platform, automated CI/CD with GitOps, centralized observability, and zero-trust security model.
2. Implementation
Infrastructure as Code & Cloud Foundation
Migrated all infrastructure to Terraform with modular, reusable components. Established multi-environment strategy (dev, staging, production) with consistent configuration and automated testing.
AWS Account Structure
Implemented AWS Organizations with separate accounts for production, staging, development, and shared services (logging, monitoring, security). Centralized billing and cost allocation tags.
Networking & Security
Designed VPC architecture with public/private/database subnets across 3 availability zones. Implemented transit gateway for inter-VPC communication, VPN for developer access, and network segmentation with security groups and NACLs.
Compute & Kubernetes
Migrated application workloads to Amazon EKS with auto-scaling node groups. Implemented pod autoscaling, spot instances for dev/staging, and efficient resource allocation with resource requests/limits.
Databases & Storage
Optimized RDS PostgreSQL with reserved instances, automated backups, and read replicas. Implemented lifecycle policies for S3 storage with intelligent tiering and archiving to Glacier.
CI/CD & Automation
Built automated deployment pipelines with GitHub Actions, implementing GitOps workflows for infrastructure and application deployments. Established automated testing, security scanning, and progressive delivery.
Infrastructure Pipeline
Terraform changes go through automated planning, validation, security scanning (Checkov), cost estimation (Infracost), and peer review before apply. Automatic rollback on failures.
Application Pipeline
Automated build, test, security scan (Snyk, Trivy), container image creation, and deployment to Kubernetes. Blue/green deployments with automated smoke tests and rollback.
GitOps Workflow
All deployments declared in Git and synced to Kubernetes via ArgoCD. Complete audit trail, easy rollbacks, and separation of build/deploy concerns.
Observability, Security & Governance
Implemented comprehensive monitoring, logging, and tracing with Datadog. Built automated alerting with PagerDuty integration. Established security scanning, secrets management, and compliance automation.
Monitoring & Alerting
Unified observability platform with metrics, logs, and traces. Custom dashboards for application health, infrastructure utilization, and business KPIs. Smart alerting with reduced noise.
Security & Secrets Management
Implemented HashiCorp Vault for secrets management with dynamic database credentials and automated rotation. Container image scanning, dependency scanning, and automated security patching.
Logging & Audit Trails
Centralized logging to Datadog with CloudTrail for AWS API calls, Kubernetes audit logs, and application logs. Automated compliance reports and security event monitoring.
Architecture Overview
The architecture consists of a multi-account AWS organization with production, staging, and development accounts. Applications run on Amazon EKS clusters with auto-scaling node groups across 3 availability zones. RDS PostgreSQL provides the database layer with automated backups and read replicas. CloudFront CDN accelerates content delivery. All infrastructure is defined in Terraform and deployed via GitHub Actions with ArgoCD managing Kubernetes deployments. Datadog provides unified observability, while Vault manages secrets and credentials. Transit Gateway connects VPCs, and Site-to-Site VPN enables secure developer access.
AWS CloudOps and Infrastructure as Code architecture implemented by HostingX for Israeli SaaS company, showing multi-account structure, EKS clusters, RDS databases, CloudFront CDN, and automated CI/CD pipelines☁️
Multi-Account AWS
Separate accounts for prod/staging/dev with centralized billing and security controls via AWS Organizations
⚙️
Amazon EKS
Kubernetes clusters with auto-scaling, spot instances, and container orchestration for application workloads
🗄️
RDS PostgreSQL
Managed database with multi-AZ deployment, automated backups, read replicas, and reserved instances
🚀
CI/CD Automation
GitHub Actions for build/test, ArgoCD for GitOps deployments, automated security scanning and rollback
📊
Datadog Observability
Unified platform for metrics, logs, traces, and APM with custom dashboards and intelligent alerting
🔒
Security & Compliance
Vault for secrets, AWS Security Hub, automated scanning, audit trails, and SOC 2 compliance controls
Results & Impact
Key Outcomes
40%
Reduction in AWS costs
$15K → $9K monthly ($72K annual savings)
10x
Faster deployments
2 days → 2 hours
99.9%
Service uptime
From 97.5% to 99.9%
80%
Less manual work
Automated operations
< 30min
Mean Time To Recovery
Down from 4+ hours
Zero
Security incidents
SOC 2 ready
Before vs After
| Metric | Before HostingX | After HostingX | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly AWS costs | $15,000 | $9,000 | 40% reduction |
| Deployment frequency | 1-2 per week | 10+ per day | 10x increase |
| Service uptime | 97.5% | 99.9% | 2.4% improvement |
| Mean Time To Recovery | 4+ hours | < 30 minutes | 8x faster |
| Infrastructure changes | 100% manual | 100% automated via IaC | Full automation |
| Security incidents | 2-3 per quarter | 0 | 100% reduction |
"HostingX transformed our infrastructure from a liability into a competitive advantage. The cost savings paid for the entire engagement in just 3 months, and now our developers can deploy with confidence. The 24/7 CloudOps support gives us peace of mind we never had before."
David Cohen
CTO, [Client Company]
Why HostingX
HostingX brings deep AWS and DevOps expertise specifically tailored for Israeli and EMEA SaaS companies. Our team has implemented CloudOps and Infrastructure as Code for dozens of fast-growing startups, understanding the unique challenges of scaling infrastructure while managing costs. We provide 24/7 managed services with Hebrew and English support, collaborate through hands-on workshops and knowledge transfer, and focus on automation, reliability, and cost optimization. Unlike large consulting firms, we deliver practical solutions fast, stay engaged for ongoing optimization, and become an extension of your engineering team.
Tech Stack & Services Used
AWS Services
• Amazon EKS
Kubernetes orchestration• Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL)
Managed database• Amazon S3
Object storage• AWS Lambda
Serverless functions• Amazon VPC
Networking• AWS Organizations
Multi-account managementInfrastructure as Code
• Terraform
Infrastructure provisioning• Terragrunt
Terraform wrapper• Checkov
IaC security scanning• Infracost
Cost estimationCI/CD & GitOps
• GitHub Actions
CI/CD pipelines• ArgoCD
GitOps for Kubernetes• Helm
Kubernetes package manager• Kustomize
Kubernetes configuration managementObservability & Monitoring
Security & Compliance
• HashiCorp Vault
Secrets management• AWS GuardDuty
Threat detection• AWS Security Hub
Security posture• Snyk
Vulnerability scanning• Trivy
Container scanningFAQ: AWS CloudOps & IaC for SaaS / Enterprise Software
Companies often ask us similar questions before we start a project, so we've included short answers below.
AWS CloudOps combines cloud operations management, automation, and best practices to run reliable, secure, and cost-efficient AWS infrastructure. For SaaS companies, it means reduced operational overhead, faster deployments, better uptime, and predictable costs. HostingX provides 24/7 managed CloudOps services specifically for Israeli and EMEA SaaS businesses.
Implementation timeline depends on infrastructure complexity and organization readiness. Most projects follow this pattern: 2 weeks for assessment and design, 6-12 weeks for implementation (infrastructure migration, IaC, CI/CD, observability), and 2-4 weeks for testing and knowledge transfer. We often deliver quick wins (cost savings, monitoring) in the first month while building toward the complete solution.
Absolutely. We specialize in incremental migrations and brownfield transformations. We assess your current AWS environment, identify improvement opportunities, and create a phased migration plan that minimizes disruption. We can work with your existing tools (Jenkins, GitLab, Prometheus, etc.) or recommend better alternatives. The goal is pragmatic improvement, not a disruptive "rip and replace."
Minimal preparation is needed to get started. We typically need: (1) AWS account access for assessment, (2) overview of your current architecture and pain points, (3) access to key stakeholders (CTO, DevOps lead, engineers), and (4) clarity on business goals (cost reduction, reliability, compliance, etc.). We handle the rest – discovery, design, implementation, and knowledge transfer.
Cost savings vary by starting point, but most clients see 30-50% reduction within 3-6 months. Common savings sources include: rightsizing over-provisioned resources (20-30%), implementing Reserved Instances and Savings Plans (40-60% on baseline compute), optimizing storage with lifecycle policies (30-50%), eliminating idle resources (varies), and architecting for efficiency (10-30%). We provide detailed cost analysis during the assessment phase.
Yes! HostingX offers 24/7 managed CloudOps services including proactive monitoring, incident response, performance optimization, cost management, security updates, and continuous improvement. Many clients start with implementation and transition to ongoing managed services. We become an extension of your team, handling infrastructure operations so your engineers can focus on product development.
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