Cost Optimization
Your cloud bill is probably 30% too high
I audit AWS and Datadog spend, identify the waste, and help you fix it with a pricing model built so I only win when you do.
The problem
Cloud overspend is the industry norm
Industry research confirms what I see in every engagement and most organisations are paying significantly more than they need to.
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27% of cloud spend is wasted
Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud report about unused or inefficiently used IaaS and PaaS resources.
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$200B in cloud waste in 2025
CloudZero estimates 32% of all cloud spending is wasted which translates to over $200 billion globally.
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3–12× over budget on Datadog
Teams regularly receive invoices 3x to 12x their budgeted amount. The true infrastructure cost runs ~97% above the base price.
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25–30% savings is not a wish
You can’t fix a budget leak if you’ve mistaken it for standard operating procedure. Most teams are living with financial gaps they no longer even see.
Specialisation
AWS and Datadog - both, deeply
Most cost consultants cover AWS at a surface level. I go deep on both platforms, because that is where the real savings are.
AWS spend audit
I analyse your full AWS bill line by line. Compute, storage, data transfer, and managed services. I identify what is over-provisioned, what is idle, and what can be replaced with a cheaper equivalent.
- EC2 rightsizing and Reserved Instance strategy
- Spot Instance adoption for fault-tolerant workloads
- S3, RDS, and data transfer cost reduction
- Savings Plans analysis and recommendations
- Tagging hygiene and cost allocation setup
Datadog spend audit
Datadog bills are notoriously hard to predict and easy to overshoot. I audit your metrics, logs, and APM configuration to eliminate the waste that accumulates invisibly until the invoice arrives.
- Custom metrics and high-cardinality reduction
- Log ingestion pipeline optimisation
- APM and tracing scope review
- Host and container agent rationalisation
- Retention and archiving policy recommendations
How it works
Three phases. One aligned incentive.
A structured process with a pricing model built around one thing. You saving real money.
Audit
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Discovery and analysis
I connect to your AWS account and Datadog organisation, analyse your spend patterns, and produce a prioritised report of savings opportunities with estimated impact and implementation complexity for each finding.
Fixed price: $1,500 / €1,300
Delivered in 2–3 weeks. No surprises.
Implementation
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On your own or with me
The audit report is detailed enough for your team to implement the recommendations independently. Or I can work alongside your engineers pairing on changes or taking full ownership of the implementation.
Time and material
You control the scope. Fully optional.
Results
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I get paid after you save
For complete alignment of incentives, I recommend a success-fee arrangement instead of time and material. I take 25% of your verified first-year savings so my only goal is to find and fix the biggest leaks.
Success fee: 25% of yearly savings
Zero risk. You only pay from what you save.
Why me
FinOps without the account-manager layer
Large FinOps consultancies bring overhead and junior analysts. You get me. Someone who has spent years operating AWS and Datadog at the engineering level, not at the reporting level. I have built and run the infrastructure I now audit.
Engineering background, not advisory one
I know which optimisations are safe to make and which ones will cause incidents at 3am. That judgment only comes from running production systems.
Savings that last
I do not just identify quick wins. I fix the processes and tagging hygiene that cause costs to creep back up after a one-off cleanup.
Transparent pricing - no retainer traps
The audit is fixed price. Phase 2 is optional. Phase 3 is paid from savings. You are never locked into anything you did not choose.
Find out what your cloud is actually costing you
The audit is a fixed price and takes 2–3 weeks. If there are no savings to be found, I will tell you that too, and you will have the report to prove it.