From Reactive to Proactive: How QloudX Managed Services Delivered 30% Cost Savings in Mobile Commerce
Executive Summary
QloudX partnered with a leading Nordic mobile commerce provider to deliver proactive AWS Managed Services, addressing patching gaps, backup risks, and cost inefficiencies.
Using a structured Plan–Build–Run–Optimize framework, QloudX automated patch cycles, enforced security governance, and implemented FinOps practices.
The engagement resulted in improved resilience, centralized EC2 backups, strengthened IAM controls, and measurable cost savings.
Monthly reporting and collaborative remediation ensured transparency and continuous improvement across cloud operations, security posture, and infrastructure maturity.
About Our Customer
Our customer is a leading Nordic mobile commerce provider offering secure, endto-end mobile payments for parking, public transport ticketing, and EV charging. With a rapidly growing footprint and strong focus on reliability and security, they serve municipalities, transit operators, and charging networks, enabling seamless cashless experiences at scale.
The Challenge
As customer scaled its cloud workloads, the internal team faced increasing challenges in maintaining a secure, optimized, and continuously available AWS environment.
- Key hurdles included:
- Manual patching cycles leading to configuration drift and potential vulnerability exposure.
- No centralized EC2 backups, creating recovery and resilience risks.
- Incomplete security governance (Security Hub, Config, GuardDuty not fully enabled and actioned).
- Limited cost governance (no Budgets, anomaly detection, or monthly FinOps cadence).
- Under/over-utilized EC2 instances with opportunities to rightsize and improve performance.
- Lack of structured reporting on usage, cost optimization, and security posture.
Customer needed an MSP partner with deep AWS expertise to bring automation, proactive governance, and measurable results.
The QloudX partnership
QloudX partnered with customer as their Cloud Managed Services Provider (MSP), applying a standardized, automation-first operating model to harden security, streamline operations, and realize FinOps value — all with clear monthly reporting and a collaborative remediation cadence.
MSP LifeCycle
QloudX delivered Managed Services using its proven Plan–Build–Run–Optimize framework, tailored to customer operating environment:
Plan
Baseline review of workloads and monitoring requirements (API Gateway, Glue, DLQ, Lambda).
Defined Security Hub compliance objectives and FinOps guardrails for budgets and anomalies.
Build
— Configured monitoring for API errors, Glue job states, DLQ messages, and Lambda failures.
— Established budgets and billing alarms for proactive cost tracking.
— Enabled and tuned Security Hub/Config rules; routed findings into MSP workflows.
Run
— Continuous monitoring of key workloads with actionable alerts.
— Triaged and remediated high/critical Security Hub findings.
— Delivered consolidated monthly MSP report (usage, cost, optimization, security).
Optimize
— Identified unused or underutilized resources for cost savings.
— Performed periodic rightsizing and optimization recommendations.
— Applied learnings from recurring security findings to harden governance.
This structured lifecycle ensured customer AWS environment remained secure, optimized, and operationally resilient.
Key Deliverables & Capabilities
Proactive Operations: Advanced Monitoring & Alerting
— Monitoring of API Gateway 4xx/5xx errors, Glue job failures, DLQ messages, and Lambda execution errors.
— Alerts tuned for actionable thresholds to reduce noise and ensure timely remediation.
Governance & Compliance: Security Posture Hardening
— AWS Security Hub and AWS Config enabled across accounts.
— Regular review and remediation of high/critical severity findings.
— Hardened compliance posture through iterative improvements.
Collaboration & Transparency: Consolidated Reporting
One unified monthly MSP report delivered, covering:
— Cloud usage and optimization insights.
— Monthly cost and anomaly analysis.
— Security assessment and posture improvements.
— Monitoring highlights for API, Glue, DLQ, and Lambda.
AWS Lays the Foundation:
- Amazon CloudWatch for API Gateway error monitoring, Glue job states, DLQ metrics, and Lambda execution errors.
- AWS Security Hub for centralized security findings and remediation tracking.
- AWS Config for compliance checks and configuration monitoring.
- AWS Budgets, Cost Explorer, Cost Anomaly Detection for proactive cost governance.
Value Realization: Cost Optimization & FinOps
— Budgets, billing alarms, and cost anomaly detection implemented.
— Proactive analysis of monthly spend and usage patterns.
— Ongoing cost optimization via rightsizing and decommissioning opportunities.
Reliability & Assurance: Disaster Recovery Alignment
— Active DR region in place, with automated failover as designed by the solutions team.
— MSP scope focused on monitoring workloads in the primary region, with awareness of DR readiness.
Outcomes
Through this MSP engagement, the customer achieved significant improvements across operations, cost, and security.
Continuous monitoring was implemented for API, AWS Glue, Lambda, and DLQ workloads, with actionable alerting.
High and critical Security Hub findings were remediated, enhancing compliance and resilience.
Proactive FinOps governance was established with budgets, alarms, and anomaly detection.
Monthly consolidated reporting provided visibility into usage, cost, and security.
Customer teams were freed from operational firefighting, enabling focus on business innovation.
Manual patching efforts were reduced by over 90%, improving operational efficiency.
100% of EC2 workloads were brought under automated backup and patch cycles, ensuring consistency and resilience.
Predictable FinOps governance was achieved through cost guardrails and anomaly detection, enabling early warnings within hours instead of weeks.
Achieved 15–25% monthly cloud cost savings via Savings Plans, SPP discounts, EC2 rightsizing, and removal of unused resources.
AWS Security Hub compliance score improved from ~70% to over 90%, with continuous monitoring in place.
Conclusion
Through its proactive Managed Services model, QloudX enabled CUSTOMER to strengthen security posture, gain transparency, reduce cloud costs, and improve operational resilience. This case demonstrates how structured MSP operations can deliver quantifiable business outcomes for global enterprises in highly demanding industries.
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