A benchmark participant in the Aged Care industry recently completed their migration to Azure. They were happy with their new environment, it was neat, tidy, and well-managed. They had already implemented many of the common cost-saving measures, such as Reservations and Azure Hybrid Use Benefit. However, they still found that their Azure costs were 50% higher than their previous on-premises solution. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, as they had embraced many of Azure’s native offerings to gain operational advantages. Still, they wanted a fresh, experienced set of eyes to review their environment and provide recommendations for optimisation and enhancement.
A Case Study: Uncovering Hidden Savings in Azure Sentinel
During our initial conversation, the customer explained that while they had successfully optimised many areas of their Azure environment, they were struggling to control their Azure Sentinel costs. This is where the power of our Azure Benchmark came into play.
By comparing their environment to benchmark data from other organisations with similar Azure migrations, we identified a significant outlier. While their spending on Foundational services was over 80% (a testament to their effective use of Reservations and Azure Hybrid Use Benefit) their Security services spending was alarmingly high. At nearly 50% of their total Azure costs, it was three times higher than the benchmark average.
This immediately gave our team a clear area of focus. A deep dive into their Sentinel spending revealed that their Azure Firewall was generating over 500 GB of logs each month, contributing to more than 25% of their total Sentinel costs. The customer had been considering replacing their Azure Firewall with the same solution they used on-premises, but it hadn’t been a priority and seemed like an additional expense and a distraction from other priorities for the Aged Care Act.
Armed with this data, we built a compelling business case to prioritise the change. The result? A projected monthly saving of $9,000, coupled with significant security and operational enhancements.
Why Our Azure Benchmark is Different
The path to reducing cloud spend is well-known: Reservations, Hybrid Use Benefits and modernising to cloud-native solutions. However, many organisations lack the ongoing FinOps processes and regular architecture reviews necessary to avoid bill shock.
This is where our experience sets us apart. We’ve worked across various industries and cloud use cases and have spent a decade building and managing Azure environments. We’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.
Conversations about cloud adoption are common, but they often lack the detailed insights needed to drive real change. It’s not about “keeping up with the Joneses,” but about sharing meaningful data that can help you advance your own cloud journey.
Our Azure Benchmark does just that. It shows you where your spending is abnormal compared to your peers, creating an opportunity to understand why. In this case, Sentinel and Networking spend were the outliers. With this information, our team of Azure experts was able to devise a plan to optimise their environment and migrate to an Azure Network Virtual Appliance (in this case, Fortigates on Azure). This delivered a solution that was not only cheaper but also more secure and manageable.
Ready to see how your Azure spend stacks up? Get in touch with us today to learn more about our Azure Benchmark and start your journey towards a more cost-effective and efficient cloud environment.
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