CloudOps Overhaul Slashes Costs 30% for Top Sports Analytics Firm

Persistent partnered with a leading sports analytics company that provides AI-powered analysis and performance insights to athletes and coaches. The platform supports over 20,000 users who upload swing and stroke data via mobile devices. The company faced challenges in scalability, security, and cost management. Persistent implemented a comprehensive CloudOps strategy using AWS native services and third-party tools to enhance reliability, security posture, and financial governance.

Challenges

• Burgeoning AWS cost due to lack of formal change management and ITSM integration, leading to ad-hoc deployments and untracked changes.
• Undefined KPIs for reliability with over 20,000 users uploading performance data.
• Security and compliance risks stemming from multiple authentication flows and inconsistent password policies, with no centralized solution to monitor posture.
• Limited automation and monitoring due to absence of centralized logging, resulting in a non-scalable architecture.

Solution

• Security and compliance enhancements through AWS Security Hub, AWS Config, and Amazon GuardDuty for continuous infrastructure assessment and anomaly detection.
• Instituted Cloud Financial Management discipline using AWS Cost Explorer, AWS CUR, Trusted Advisor, Compute Optimizer and AWS Cost Optimization Hub including 3^rd party platforms to curb costs and increase visibility.
• Established observability and reliability improvements via baseline performance KPIs and robust monitoring using CloudWatch dashboards, alarms, and metrics.
• Defined formal change management processes with improved automation coverage through CI/CD pipelines for cloud infrastructure and application deployments.
• Technologies used: AWS CloudWatch, AWS AppSync, Cognito, IoT Core, VPC, CloudTrail, AWS Config, Security Hub, GuardDuty, API Gateway, Lambda, Glue, Kinesis, S3, ECS, EKS, Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor, Cost Optimization Hub, 3^rd Party CCM(Cloud Cost Management) tools.

Outcomes

• Stronger cloud security posture with all major vulnerabilities fixed and 70% faster detection through continuous monitoring.
• 30% reduction in AWS cloud costs via rightsizing, scheduling, wastage management, and cost governance.
• Improved operational efficiency with ~30% faster deployment lead times and reduced release errors.
• Achieved 99.9% uptime KPI, ensuring consistent platform reliability.