E-Commerce Platform
Retail TechnologyChallenge
Growing e-commerce platform serving 2M+ customers was spending $85K/month on AWS, with costs growing 30% annually despite stable traffic patterns.
Solution
- • Migrated from 200+ EC2 instances to 12 bare metal servers
- • Replaced RDS with self-managed PostgreSQL clusters
- • Implemented Redis for caching instead of ElastiCache
- • Built CDN using Cloudflare instead of CloudFront
Results
Reduced monthly infrastructure costs to $32K while improving page load times by 40%. The existing DevOps team of 3 managed the entire migration and ongoing operations.
SaaS Analytics Company
Business IntelligenceChallenge
Data-intensive analytics platform processing 50TB daily was facing unsustainable AWS costs, particularly for compute and data transfer.
Solution
- • Deployed Kubernetes on bare metal for compute workloads
- • Replaced EMR with open-source Spark clusters
- • Built object storage using MinIO instead of S3
- • Implemented ClickHouse for analytics instead of Redshift
Results
Cut infrastructure costs by 60% while processing queries 3x faster. ROI achieved in 14 months, including all hardware and migration costs.
FinTech Startup
Financial ServicesChallenge
Payment processing platform with strict compliance requirements was overpaying for cloud services while needing better control over security.
Solution
- • Colocated servers in PCI-compliant data centers
- • Implemented hardware security modules (HSMs)
- • Built redundancy across two geographic locations
- • Maintained cloud presence for burst capacity only
Results
Achieved better security compliance at half the cost. Latency improved by 65% for payment processing. Passed all regulatory audits with flying colors.
Media Streaming Service
EntertainmentChallenge
Video streaming platform serving 5M+ users was paying enormous egress fees to AWS, with bandwidth costs eating into margins.
Solution
- • Built edge servers in key markets
- • Negotiated direct peering agreements with ISPs
- • Implemented efficient video encoding pipeline
- • Kept AWS for origin storage and transcoding only
Results
Reduced bandwidth costs by 70% while improving streaming quality. Users experienced 50% less buffering. Achieved profitability 6 months after migration.
Common Patterns in Mid-Market Success
Predictable Workloads
Most mid-market companies have stable, predictable traffic patterns that don't require elastic scaling. They're paying a premium for flexibility they don't use.
Overpaying for Managed Services
Companies often use expensive managed services (RDS, ElastiCache, etc.) when open-source alternatives would serve them just as well at a fraction of the cost.
Data Transfer Costs
Egress fees can account for 30-50% of cloud bills for data-intensive applications. Bare metal eliminates these artificial costs.
Team Capability
Modern tooling makes bare metal as easy to manage as cloud. Existing teams adapt quickly with proper automation and documentation.
Key Takeaways
- Mid-market companies typically save 40-60% on infrastructure costs
- Migration can be completed in 3-6 months with minimal risk
- Existing teams can handle bare metal with modern tooling
- Performance often improves due to dedicated resources
- Hybrid approaches work well for handling peak loads