A leading online services company based in Germany with over 10,000 employees engaged Redress Compliance to renegotiate its AWS agreement. Through comprehensive usage assessment, compute and storage right-sizing, Reserved Instance and Savings Plan optimisation, industry benchmarking, and data-driven negotiation, Redress achieved €4.5 million in savings over three years — a 27% reduction in annual AWS costs.
See also: Global Technology Company: AWS Negotiation · AWS Contract Negotiation Service
The client is a leading online services company headquartered in Germany with over 10,000 employees and operations spanning multiple European markets. The company operates a high-traffic digital platform that serves millions of users daily, providing online services that require continuous availability, low-latency content delivery, real-time data processing, and the capacity to handle significant traffic spikes during peak usage periods.
AWS is the backbone of the company’s technology infrastructure. Amazon EC2 provides the core compute capacity for the platform’s application servers and backend processing. Amazon S3 handles the massive data storage requirements including user-generated content, media assets, and operational data. Amazon CloudFront delivers content to users across Europe with low latency through its edge network. AWS analytics services including Amazon Redshift and Amazon EMR power the data analytics and machine learning workloads that drive the platform’s recommendation engines and personalisation features.
The company’s AWS consumption had grown exponentially as platform usage expanded across European markets, new features were launched that required additional compute and storage resources, and data analytics workloads became increasingly central to the business strategy. This rapid growth created a classic cloud cost management challenge: AWS spending had increased faster than revenue, the relationship between cloud resources consumed and business value delivered was poorly understood, and the company’s AWS agreement no longer reflected the company’s scale or negotiating leverage.
The original agreement had been structured around standard on-demand pricing with limited Reserved Instance coverage and no enterprise-level discount programme, meaning the company was paying significantly more per unit of compute, storage, and data transfer than its consumption volumes warranted.
The European operating environment also introduced specific considerations. The company’s data residency and GDPR compliance requirements meant that workloads needed to run in AWS’s European regions (primarily Frankfurt and Ireland), limiting the flexibility to optimise costs by shifting workloads to lower-cost regions. European energy costs and data sovereignty requirements influenced the cost structure differently than US-based deployments, and the company needed contractual certainty about data handling and regional availability that standard AWS terms did not fully address.
The company’s AWS environment presented four interconnected challenges that had developed as the platform grew rapidly without corresponding maturation of cloud cost management practices.
AWS costs had grown in line with — and in some cases faster than — platform usage growth. Engineering teams prioritised availability and performance over cost efficiency, and the absence of cloud cost governance meant that resources were provisioned generously without subsequent right-sizing. Data storage costs grew continuously as content accumulated without lifecycle management policies, data transfer costs increased as the platform expanded into additional European markets, and compute costs scaled with new feature launches.
The usage assessment revealed significant overprovisioning across the AWS estate. EC2 instances were frequently sized for peak capacity but ran at low utilisation during normal operating periods. Reserved Instances purchased in earlier periods no longer matched the instance types and sizes the platform actually used. S3 storage included large volumes of data that had not been accessed in months but remained in expensive standard storage tiers. Redundant services ran in multiple availability zones beyond what reliability requirements actually demanded.
The AWS services portfolio had evolved organically as engineering teams adopted new services to solve specific technical problems without evaluating whether existing services could achieve the same outcome. The platform used multiple database services where consolidation could reduce costs, analytics clusters were active for only 10–14 hours per day but billed for 24 hours, and content delivery architecture had not been optimised to take advantage of CloudFront’s tiered pricing for high-volume European traffic.
The existing AWS agreement provided limited flexibility for the company’s dynamic usage patterns. The contract was structured around standard pricing tiers without enterprise-level discount commitments. Reserved Instance terms were rigid with no modification rights as requirements evolved. There were no provisions for the kind of volume-based enterprise discount programme that AWS offers to its largest customers, and the contract lacked specific commitments around data residency, European region availability, and GDPR-related data handling.
Redress Compliance was engaged to deliver a comprehensive AWS contract negotiation advisory following a structured five-phase methodology: usage assessment and analysis, needs prioritisation, strategic preparation with benchmarking, negotiation and contract revision, and governance implementation.
Redress Compliance’s independence from AWS was critical for this engagement. As an advisory firm with no AWS partnership, reseller relationship, or referral arrangement, every recommendation served the company’s interests exclusively. AWS’s account team and partner ecosystem benefit from higher cloud consumption — they have no inherent incentive to help customers reduce spending, right-size resources, or negotiate lower pricing. Independent advisory ensures that the analysis and negotiation are conducted purely in the client’s interest. For more on our approach, see: AWS Contract Negotiation Service.
Redress conducted an in-depth analysis of the company’s AWS consumption across all services, regions, and accounts. The analysis used AWS Cost Explorer data, detailed billing reports, and resource-level utilisation metrics to build a comprehensive picture of where money was being spent, which resources were delivering value, and where spending could be reduced without affecting platform performance or availability.
The team analysed every EC2 instance across the company’s AWS accounts, examining instance types, sizes, utilisation rates, and purchasing models (on-demand, Reserved Instance, or Spot). The analysis revealed that a significant percentage of EC2 instances were oversized — provisioned with more CPU, memory, or storage than their workloads required. Many instances had been launched at generous specifications during initial deployment and never right-sized as actual usage patterns became clear. The analysis also identified Reserved Instances that had been purchased for instance types and sizes that no longer matched the platform’s requirements, resulting in unused reservations alongside on-demand spending for the instances actually in use.
Redress assessed S3 storage utilisation, identifying data that could be migrated to lower-cost storage tiers (S3 Infrequent Access, S3 Glacier) based on access frequency patterns. The analysis found substantial volumes of user-generated content, log data, and analytics artefacts that had not been accessed for months but remained in S3 Standard at the highest storage cost. Data transfer costs — a significant component of AWS spending for European platforms serving users across multiple countries — were analysed to identify opportunities for architecture optimisation, CDN configuration improvements, and regional traffic routing changes that could reduce cross-region and internet egress charges.
Redress reviewed the complete portfolio of AWS services in use, identifying redundancies, consolidation opportunities, and services where the company was paying for provisioned capacity that exceeded actual usage. Analytics clusters running on provisioned-capacity Redshift and EMR instances were active for only 10–14 hours per day but billed for 24 hours, representing substantial waste. Database services that could be consolidated or migrated to more cost-effective alternatives were identified. CloudFront configuration was reviewed to ensure the company was benefiting from volume-tier pricing for its substantial European traffic volumes.
Redress worked with the company’s product, engineering, and IT leadership teams to define which AWS resources and services were genuinely critical for platform operations, which represented desirable-but-optimisable capacity, and which could be eliminated or restructured without any impact on the user experience.
Critical infrastructure identified: Core application servers, primary databases, content delivery network, real-time analytics pipelines, and disaster recovery infrastructure. These resources required guaranteed capacity, high availability, and could not be interrupted or reduced without direct impact on user experience and platform reliability.
Right-sizing opportunities confirmed: Development and staging environments, batch processing workloads, non-real-time analytics jobs, and internal tooling were identified as candidates for instance right-sizing, scheduling-based operation (running only during business hours), or migration to Spot Instances for non-critical workloads.
Storage lifecycle policies defined: Working with product and data teams, Redress defined data lifecycle policies that classified content and data by access frequency, enabling automatic tiering to lower-cost S3 storage classes. User-generated content older than 90 days with no recent access would migrate to S3 Infrequent Access; log data and analytics artefacts older than 30 days would migrate to S3 Glacier for long-term retention at a fraction of standard storage cost.
Consolidated service architecture proposed: Multiple database services performing similar functions could be consolidated, analytics workloads could be migrated to serverless alternatives (Athena, Lambda) that charge only for actual execution time rather than provisioned capacity, and CloudFront configuration could be optimised for the company’s specific European traffic distribution pattern.
Redress benchmarked the company’s AWS costs against peer European online services companies and digital platforms of comparable scale and complexity. The benchmarking covered per-unit pricing for compute, storage, and data transfer, the discount levels achieved by similar-scale AWS customers through Enterprise Discount Programmes (EDPs), and the contractual terms and flexibility provisions that AWS typically provides to customers at this consumption level.
| Benchmark Category | Company’s Position | Peer Benchmark | Gap Identified |
|---|---|---|---|
| EC2 compute pricing | Near on-demand rates, limited RI coverage | 20–35% below on-demand via Savings Plans/EDP | Substantial discount achievable |
| S3 storage pricing | 90%+ data in Standard tier | Tiered lifecycle with 40–60% in lower-cost tiers | Storage cost reduction of 30–40% |
| Data transfer costs | Above median for European platforms | Optimised CDN and routing configurations | 15–25% transfer cost reduction |
| Enterprise discount level | No EDP in place | 8–15% blanket discount for comparable spend | EDP achievable at current consumption |
The benchmarking confirmed that the company was paying significantly above market rates because its agreement predated its current scale and had never been renegotiated. Overall, €4.5M in savings was achievable through optimisation and negotiation combined.
With comprehensive usage data, completed optimisation analysis, defined priorities, and benchmarking evidence establishing the company’s position relative to peers, Redress developed and executed a negotiation strategy with AWS’s enterprise sales team. The strategy leveraged four elements: the optimised consumption baseline, the benchmarking evidence, the company’s growth trajectory, and competitive alternatives evaluating Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure for specific workloads to create genuine pricing pressure.
Resource optimisation savings (€1.2M): The immediate optimisation actions — EC2 right-sizing, Reserved Instance modernisation to Savings Plans, S3 lifecycle tiering, analytics workload scheduling, and service consolidation — generated €1.2 million in direct cost reductions by eliminating spending on resources that were overprovisioned, underutilised, or storing data in unnecessarily expensive storage tiers.
Enterprise Discount Programme (EDP): Redress negotiated an EDP with AWS that provided a blanket percentage discount on all AWS consumption above a committed spend threshold. The EDP was structured to align with the company’s projected growth trajectory, with the committed spend level set below expected consumption to ensure the discount applied to the maximum possible spend without creating risk of under-consumption penalties. The EDP provided the single largest component of the negotiated savings.
Service-specific discounts: Beyond the blanket EDP discount, Redress negotiated additional volume-based discounts on the company’s highest-spend services — EC2 compute, S3 storage, CloudFront content delivery, and data transfer. These service-specific discounts stacked on top of the EDP, compounding the savings. The discounts were structured with tiered pricing that provided progressively better rates as consumption grew.
Flexibility and protections secured: The restructured agreement includes the ability to modify Reserved Instance and Savings Plan commitments as requirements evolve, pricing protections that cap increases for the contract term, specific commitments on European region data residency and GDPR-compliant data handling, and scaling provisions that accommodate significant traffic fluctuations without penalty.
Redress Compliance provides independent AWS contract advisory — fixed-fee, no vendor affiliations. Our cloud specialists help enterprises negotiate EDP commitments, reserved instances, and consumption-based pricing. Explore AWS Advisory Services →
The final phase focused on implementing the optimised cloud architecture and establishing governance processes that maintain cost efficiency throughout the three-year contract term. Cloud cost governance is particularly important for high-growth online services companies because engineering teams continuously deploy new features and services that add AWS resources — without governance, the optimisation gains would erode as new resources are provisioned without cost review.
Implemented AWS Cost Explorer dashboards, custom CloudWatch alerts, and third-party cost management tools providing real-time visibility into AWS spending by service, account, team, and environment. The dashboards track spending against the EDP commitment threshold, monitor Reserved Instance and Savings Plan utilisation, and flag resource-level anomalies such as instances with sustained low utilisation or S3 buckets with high storage costs relative to access frequency.
Established formal processes for provisioning new AWS resources that include cost review and right-sizing validation. New EC2 instances require specification justification, and quarterly right-sizing reviews ensure that instances remain appropriately sized as workload patterns evolve. S3 lifecycle policies are automatically applied to new buckets, and data retention policies ensure that content and logs migrate to lower-cost tiers on schedule.
Delivered workshops for engineering, DevOps, and product teams covering AWS pricing models, the cost implications of architectural decisions, and practical techniques for optimising cloud costs without compromising performance or availability. The training programme was designed to embed cost awareness into the engineering culture — ensuring that engineers consider cost alongside performance and reliability when making infrastructure decisions.
“Redress Compliance’s expertise transformed our AWS strategy. Their support not only delivered substantial cost savings but also ensured our agreement aligns with our platform’s growth and innovation goals. They were an indispensable partner.”
— CTO
The engagement delivered €4.5M in total savings over the three-year contract term — a 27% reduction in the company’s annual AWS costs. The savings comprised three complementary components: €1.2 million from immediate resource optimisation including EC2 right-sizing, storage lifecycle tiering, analytics workload scheduling, and service consolidation that eliminated spending on underutilised and overprovisioned resources; the Enterprise Discount Programme providing a blanket percentage discount across all AWS consumption above the committed spend threshold, representing the largest savings component; and service-specific volume discounts on compute, storage, content delivery, and data transfer that stacked on top of the EDP for the company’s highest-spend services.
Operationally, the company now has centralised visibility into AWS spending with real-time tracking, automated alerting, and team-level cost attribution for the first time. The governance framework ensures that new resource provisioning undergoes cost review, storage lifecycle policies are automatically applied, and engineering teams maintain cost awareness in their infrastructure decisions. The restructured agreement includes European data residency commitments, GDPR-compliant data handling provisions, and scaling flexibility that the previous contract lacked entirely.
Negotiating better pricing on an overprovisioned AWS estate leaves money on the table. Right-sizing instances, implementing storage lifecycle policies, and consolidating redundant services reduce the consumption baseline — then negotiated discounts apply to the optimised (lower) consumption, compounding the savings. Complete the optimisation before entering pricing negotiations with AWS.
AWS offers EDPs to customers whose consumption meets certain thresholds, but many companies do not realise they qualify or do not have the negotiating expertise to secure favourable EDP terms. Companies spending €2M+ annually on AWS should evaluate whether an EDP would deliver meaningful savings. See: AWS Contract Negotiation Service.
Standard AWS terms may not provide the specific data residency, data handling, and regional availability commitments that European companies require for regulatory compliance. These provisions should be negotiated as part of the enterprise agreement rather than relying on AWS’s standard data processing agreements alone.
Without ongoing governance, the cost optimisation achieved through right-sizing and negotiation will erode within 12–18 months as new resources are provisioned without cost review, instances drift from their optimised specifications, and data accumulates without lifecycle management. Embedding cost awareness into engineering culture and establishing automated governance processes is essential for sustaining the savings achieved through negotiation.
The savings came from three sources: €1.2M from immediate resource optimisation including EC2 right-sizing, S3 storage lifecycle tiering, analytics workload scheduling, and service consolidation; an Enterprise Discount Programme (EDP) providing a blanket percentage discount on all AWS consumption above a committed spend threshold; and service-specific volume discounts on compute, storage, content delivery, and data transfer that stacked on top of the EDP. The optimisation reduced the consumption baseline, and the negotiated discounts applied to the efficient consumption level, compounding the savings.
An EDP is a contractual arrangement where AWS provides a blanket percentage discount on all consumption in exchange for a committed minimum annual spend over a multi-year term. EDPs are available to customers whose AWS consumption exceeds certain thresholds and are negotiated directly with AWS’s enterprise sales team. The discount percentage, committed spend level, and term length are all negotiable — companies that approach EDP negotiations with benchmarking data and independent advisory consistently achieve better terms than those that rely solely on AWS’s initial offer.
Negotiating discounts on an overprovisioned AWS estate means you are still paying for resources you do not need — just at a lower rate. By right-sizing instances, implementing storage lifecycle policies, and consolidating redundant services before negotiation, you reduce your consumption baseline. The negotiated discounts then apply to the smaller, efficient consumption level, maximising the total savings. In this engagement, the €1.2M in resource optimisation savings was realised before the negotiation began, and the EDP and service discounts then applied to the reduced baseline.
European companies should negotiate explicit contractual commitments on data residency, specifying which AWS regions will host their data and workloads. Standard AWS terms may not provide sufficient assurance for GDPR compliance or sector-specific regulations. The enterprise agreement should include commitments on data storage location, data processing location, data transfer restrictions, and AWS’s obligations regarding data sovereignty. These provisions should be negotiated alongside pricing as part of the enterprise agreement rather than relying on AWS’s standard data processing addendum alone.
Reserved Instances commit to a specific instance type, size, and region for a one or three-year term in exchange for a discount. Savings Plans commit to a dollar-per-hour spend level for compute across any instance type, size, or region, providing similar discounts with greater flexibility. For companies whose infrastructure evolves rapidly, Savings Plans generally provide better value because they accommodate changes in instance types and sizes without losing the commitment discount. Redress typically recommends migrating from Reserved Instances to Savings Plans during AWS renegotiations.
A comprehensive AWS negotiation engagement typically takes 8–12 weeks, starting 4–6 months before the contract renewal or EDP commitment date. The timeline includes usage assessment and resource-level analysis (2–3 weeks), needs prioritisation and benchmarking (2–3 weeks), strategy development (1–2 weeks), and negotiation with AWS’s enterprise sales team (3–4 weeks). Starting early provides sufficient time for resource optimisation to reduce the consumption baseline before the pricing negotiation begins.
For AWS contracts above €1M annual consumption, independent advisory consistently delivers returns that far exceed the advisory cost. AWS’s account team benefits from higher consumption, and the AWS partner ecosystem typically earns revenue from reselling AWS services rather than reducing costs. An independent advisor with no AWS commercial relationship ensures that every recommendation serves the customer’s interests exclusively. The €4.5M saved in this engagement demonstrates the return on investment from expert, unconflicted AWS negotiation support.