A multinational electronics and technology enterprise engaged Effectual to address growing operational risks and cloud spend in its AWS environment. The organization had made significant investments in AWS to support global operations, but inconsistent patching, limited cost visibility, and legacy backup patterns were constraining its ability to scale efficiently. Effectual was brought in as a managed services partner to define a disciplined approach to security, cost optimization, and resiliency that would align with internal corporate controls while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) with a clear, quantifiable impact.
About the Customer
The customer is a multinational technology conglomerate that ranks among the world’s leading electronics and digital innovation brands, with diverse business units spanning across manufacturing, supply chain, customer engagement, and digital services. As a market leader in multiple product categories, the organization depends on resilient digital platforms and data-driven services to support both enterprise operations and consumer-facing applications.
The Challenge
The customer’s internal security team maintains a unified hybrid security framework that governs both on-premises and cloud environments. While these controls are generally effective in principle, the scale and diversity of the AWS footprint created operational friction. Multiple business units were deploying workloads at different maturity levels, and the security organization needed a pragmatic way to ensure that AWS environments consistently aligned with internal policies and AWS best practices without increasing manual oversight or sacrificing security.
At the same time, cloud costs were escalating. The customer’s Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS usage had expanded quickly, and there was no consolidated view into which resources were rightsized, underutilized, or no longer needed. Idle instances, unattached volumes, and legacy storage configurations were inflating monthly AWS spend and obscuring the true cost of running critical workloads.
Patching and vulnerability management presented an additional gap. The organization lacked a standardized, automated patching cadence for its AWS estate. As a result, there was no set time frame for resolving patch-related vulnerabilities, making it difficult for security stakeholders to quantify risk exposure or demonstrate adherence to industry standards, such as the Center for Internet Security (CIS) AWS Foundations Benchmark. Without a more structured approach, the customer faced an expanding attack surface, rising operational overhead, and limited ability to validate controls at scale.
The Solution
Effectual engaged as a strategic managed services partner to standardize security operations and optimize AWS resource utilization. The engagement began with a detailed assessment of existing workloads using AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Compute Optimizer, supplemented with reporting from MontyCloud to consolidate utilization and cost insights. This analysis identified specific optimization opportunities across the EC2 fleet and EBS storage layer, along with gaps in patching automation and backup strategies.
Rightsizing to Reduce Compute Spend
For compute optimization, Effectual focused on the customer’s Amazon EC2 environment. Using AWS Compute Optimizer recommendations and real usage data, Effectual proposed a rightsizing plan that would reduce EC2 spend without sacrificing performance. The plan included downsizing overprovisioned instances, aligning instance types to actual performance requirements, and decommissioning instances that were no longer required. These changes were structured to preserve performance and availability while establishing a repeatable process for future workload deployment and optimization.
Modernizing Storage for Efficiency and Sustainability
Effectual addressed storage cost and efficiency by targeting Amazon EBS. The team identified unused and unattached EBS volumes that could be safely deleted to reduce spend. In parallel, Effectual recommended migrating from gp2 to gp3 volumes where appropriate. This modernization effort preserved performance while improving price-to-performance ratios, adding incremental annual savings, and contributing to the customer’s sustainability objectives by reducing unnecessary resource consumption.
Standardizing Backups to Improve Recovery
To strengthen backup and recovery, Effectual designed a new strategy that shifted from EBS volume-only backups to standardized Amazon Machine Image (AMI) snapshots. This AMI-based approach provided a consistent, repeatable pattern for protecting critical workloads and simplified recovery procedures. With AMI snapshots, the customer could restore entire system images rather than rebuilding environments from individual volume backups, reducing Recovery Time Objective from hours to minutes for key workloads while keeping overall backup spend flat.
Automating Patch Management
Security posture and patch compliance were addressed using AWS Systems Manager, including Fleet Manager and Patch Manager. Effectual implemented an automated, quarterly patching process that relied on AWS Systems Manager to orchestrate patch baselines, maintenance windows, and compliance reporting. Terraform templates codified these standards as infrastructure as code, ensuring that patching policies were applied consistently across accounts and environments and could be audited and evolved over time.
Managed Services for Continuous Optimization and Governance
Effectual’s managed services model will provide continuous oversight of these improvements. Ongoing monitoring of Cost Explorer, Compute Optimizer, and Systems Manager compliance reports will allow Effectual to track realized savings, maintain patching cadence, and identify new optimization opportunities as workloads evolve. New applications entering the environment can be onboarded, ensuring that cost and security baselines are preserved to prevent drift from internal security and governance requirements.
The Results
The combined EC2 and EBS optimizations resulted in a proposed TCO reduction of 10% based on existing and projected monthly usage. These savings are expected to increase as rightsizing and decommissioning changes are fully implemented, giving the customer a clear, quantifiable return on its partnership with Effectual and its investment in AWS.
By standardizing on AMI-based backups, the customer significantly improved resiliency without increasing backup costs. Recovery Time Objective for critical workloads decreased from a window measured in hours to one measured in minutes, enhancing the organization’s ability to meet internal service level expectations and maintain continuity in the event of incidents or failures.
The automated quarterly patching solution reduced the lifecycle of patching-related vulnerabilities from an effectively infinite timeframe to a controlled 90-day cycle. This change materially decreased the organization’s attack surface and improved alignment with both the AWS CIS framework and the customer’s internal hybrid security standards. Security and operations teams now have a predictable, auditable patching process supported by AWS Systems Manager and Terraform, reducing manual effort and enabling more proactive risk management.
