Cloud Cost Optimization Audit

The Pattern We See in Every Audit

A scaled-up CEO called us some time ago. He had three AWS accounts, five Azure subscriptions, and one GCP project nobody remembered creating. Not a single Organisation account umbrella anywhere. Each vendor his company bought software from had different environment requirements. Each requirement spawned a new setup. Nobody consolidated. The documentation lived in the head of someone who left months earlier.

This is not unusual. It is the default state of most growing companies.

After a few weeks of CTOaaS optimization work, restructuring procurement and rationalizing deployment across cloud environments, the annual savings exceeded the cost of a full-time CTO. We checked the numbers twice.

The root cause repeats: bad decisions at initial procurement, duplicated infrastructure across vendors, and environments that multiply because consolidation never becomes anyone's job. Load balancers running in pairs when one would do. Database servers at five percent capacity. Identity providers no one uses. Snapshots from 2015 kept "just in case."

Most of this can be fixed without production downtime. You just need someone who knows where to look.

What Cloud Cost Optimization Covers

Infrastructure and Resource Analysis

We map all active cloud resources across providers:AWS, Azure, GCP, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, and hybrid setups. We identify duplicated environments and services, analyze actual utilization (CPU, memory, storage, network), and review network configuration, VPCs, and security groups.

Cost Structure Audit

We analyze invoices from the last 24 months. We find "zombie resources", assets generating cost without delivering value. We compare Reserved Instances against On-Demand and Spot pricing. We review licenses and managed services for consolidation opportunities.

Security Posture Review

We check IAM configuration and access policies. We verify least-privilege principles are applied. We audit secrets management and credential handling. We test backup and disaster recovery readiness.

Application Architecture Review

We analyze containers and orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS, Docker Swarm). We assess load balancing and auto-scaling strategies. We review CI/CD pipelines and deployment processes. We examine database configurations and caching strategies.

Where Organizations Usually Are

Requests for cloud cost optimization tend to come from a few clear situations:

• Multiple cloud providers are in use because different vendors required different environments, and consolidation never happened.
• Monthly invoices are confusing; finance asks questions that engineering cannot answer with confidence.
• The person who understood the infrastructure has left, and documentation is incomplete or missing.
• ... or a funding round or acquisition is approaching, and the company needs a clean cost structure to present.

Leadership suspects the setup is inefficient but lacks the time or expertise to investigate properly.

What You Get From The Audit

The audit produces outputs you can act on immediately, not a PDF that sits in your inbox.

Usually Cost reduction in the 20-60% range. The main sources: eliminating duplicated resources, rightsizing instances to actual usage, and moving to Reserved Instances where usage patterns justify commitment.

Full infrastructure visibility. You receive complete documentation: architecture diagrams, resource maps, and dependency lists. No more relying on institutional knowledge that walked out the door.

Improved performance without additional spend. Configuration optimization often improves application performance as a side effect of removing bottlenecks and fixing misconfigurations.

Security hardening. We identify public buckets, overly permissive security groups, and IAM policies that grant more access than necessary—exposures that create regulatory and reputational risk.

A prioritized action plan. Each recommendation includes estimated effort, expected savings, and implementation risk. Changes are sequenced so quick wins come first and complex migrations are properly staged.

** [Additional add-on service]: Disaster recovery verification.** We test whether backups actually work, whether environments can be rebuilt from snapshots, and how long recovery would take.

How The Engagement Runs

Weeks 1-2: Discovery

We obtain read-only access to cloud consoles. We export and analyze utilization data. We interview key team members to understand history, constraints, and planned changes.

Weeks 3-4: Analysis and Recommendations

We prepare a detailed findings report with severity ratings. We develop an optimization plan with prioritized actions. We estimate potential savings and implementation effort for each change.

Week 5+: Implementation Support (Optional)

We assist with executing changes. We monitor optimization results. We adjust the plan based on outcomes and any new requirements.

Who Performs The Audit

A2Z WEB delivers the audit with CTOs and senior infrastructure engineers who have optimized cloud environments across SaaS platforms, e-commerce systems, logistics workflows, and API-heavy architectures. The founder acts as Principal Auditor and leads the engagement end-to-end.

We are not partners or resellers for AWS, Azure, or GCP. We recommend what works for you, not what generates commission for us.

Why A2Z WEB

25 years of infrastructure optimization experience - from the era when "cloud" meant only a weather pattern, through virtualization, containerization, and current multi-cloud complexity.

CTO-level perspective with hands-on execution. We do not just tell you what to change; we show you how and can help implement.

Vendor-neutral recommendations. Every suggestion is justified by your situation, not by partnership agreements.

SOC 2 Type II certified operations. We handle access and audit artifacts with the same discipline we recommend to clients.

Let's build something amazing together!

Have a cloud cost problem or suspect your infrastructure spend is higher than it should be? We've got you covered.

Schedule a consultation now!