iSpot achieves discounts on 95% of EC2 usage with nOps

Overview

iSpot is a leader in real-time TV ad measurement that helps major advertisers connect TV impressions to business outcomes. Trusted by over 400 brands, agencies, and TV networks, the acceleration in size and complexity of iSpot’s cloud infrastructure led to challenges with AWS cost visibility and allocation. By leveraging nOps Business Contexts Plus (BC+), iSpot transformed its approach to AWS spend management, gaining detailed insights and precisely aligning costs with customer activity. This shift enabled iSpot to achieve its financial reporting goals and optimize costs across its rapidly scaling infrastructure.

The Challenge

Before nOps, managing AWS commitments was time-consuming and complex. Existing cost visibility tools recommended commitments based on historical data, but iSpot's rapid growth and dynamic usage made it difficult to plan long-term. The finance team also lacked the granular visibility needed to track AWS costs by product or customer, making resource allocation a challenge.

The Solution: nOps Business Contexts Plus and Automated Commitment Management

nOps, recommended by AWS, helped iSpot automate commitment management and minimize the risk of overcommitting during frequent growth periods. With nOps' automation, iSpot achieved 95% discount coverage for EC2 commitments, allowing the team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than manual cost management.

Key Features of nOps for iSpot:

• Automated Reserved Instance (RI) and Savings Plan (SP) Management: Provided iSpot with discounts on 95% of EC2 usage, reducing manual intervention and allowing the company to save significantly on AWS costs.
• Risk-free: Most solutions required a 1-year minimum commitment, and up to 3 years to ramp savings. nOps’ risk-free upfront savings model provided the flexibility and savings on day 1 that iSpot needed. 
• Business Contexts Plus (BC+): BC+ offered deeper insights into Kubernetes and EC2 spend, allowing iSpot to optimize their infrastructure and align cloud resource usage with its dynamic workloads.
• Granular Cost Allocation: Enabled iSpot to track AWS expenses in detail by labeling Kubernetes pods and linking them with AWS tags. This precision and ease of use helped align finance and engineering by allocating costs accurately by feature, team and customer, allowing iSpot to quickly achieve its budgeting/tracking goals.“nOps has taken a lot of the guesswork out of managing our AWS commitments. With 95% coverage, we’re able to optimize costs without constantly adjusting our strategy.”
  Josh Browder, Principal DevOps Engineer, iSpot
  

“nOps has taken a lot of the guesswork out of managing our AWS commitments. With 95% coverage, we’re able to optimize costs without constantly adjusting our strategy.”

Josh Browder, Principal DevOps Engineer, iSpot

Business Impact

By automating its RI and SP management with nOps, iSpot achieved a significant reduction in AWS costs while maintaining high performance and agility during growth periods. Business Contexts+ allowed iSpot to precisely and automatically allocate costs, leading to faster, easier and more accurate financial reporting and budgeting.

Key Business Results:

• 95% EC2 coverage through automated RI and SP management.
• 40% reduction in time spent on monthly financial reporting.
• Increased cost visibility led to better financial accountability across departments.
• Improved cost allocation accuracy by leveraging detailed Kubernetes pod-level insights, enabling iSpot to align costs more closely with customer usage.nOps Business Contexts Plus (BC+) enabled us to optimize our AWS costs and provide clear, actionable insights to our finance team. It’s been a game-changer in terms of visibility and reporting.
  Josh Browder, Principal DevOps Engineer, iSpot

nOps Business Contexts Plus (BC+) enabled us to optimize our AWS costs and provide clear, actionable insights to our finance team. It’s been a game-changer in terms of visibility and reporting.

Josh Browder, Principal DevOps Engineer, iSpot