Spot by Flexera Pay-As-You-Go

Positive

Our main use case for Spot  is to optimize our cloud cost, specifically the AWS  cloud cost, by buying proper savings plans and commitments so that we can effectively manage the overall compute savings that we are doing. That is the immediate use case, and in the future, we would like to use Spot  Instances and conduct a POC with that to reduce further AWS  costs.

In the future, we would like to utilize Spot Instances and implement some automation in place to leverage that aspect from AWS, thereby reducing the overall running compute costs.

The best features Spot offers include the overall tool, the dashboard, and the major impact it has in our organization, which is to reduce costs from both a commitment management perspective and with Spot Instances along with the automation behind it.

The dashboard and automation features stand out to me because currently, we do not have a mechanism to detect whether a particular instance is going to expire within AWS when we are using a Spot Instance. Spot helps us detect such changes within AWS at least one hour prior, allowing us to have a mitigation plan in place and host other servers within the same setup to avoid impacting the application. This automation has helped us significantly since previously we were trying to use Spot Instances but were unable to implement that. One use case we plan to implement within the next few months is the overall commitment savings, which we used to manage manually, but with Spot, it automatically helps us detect when and what kind of instances to purchase, making it easier for us to manage our overall commitment for the savings plan.

Spot has impacted my organization positively so far, showing some cost savings to a certain extent. I believe that over the next few months, we will obtain a proper number in terms of cost savings, but I can already see certain cost savings from the past few months.

Spot could be improved by adding features that help identify data to optimize storage costs by detecting datasets within our environment based on criteria such as age and usage.

Storage optimization is the only need on my wish list for Spot.

We have been using Spot very recently, so it has been close to a year that we are using it.

Spot has been stable so far.

I have not yet checked the scalability of Spot because we are using it for all the services running on AWS. As of now, I feel it is meeting our expectations, though I have not tested it for scalability at higher volumes.

My experience with customer support has been good.

Negative

We did not previously use any other solution.

Deploying Spot in my environment was quite easy; it did not take long at all, just a few hours to integrate with AWS.

My experience with the configuration process was good; it was straightforward as we followed the documentation and were able to complete it successfully.

I found the procurement process easy since we completed it through the AWS Marketplace , making it straightforward.

There was nothing concerning regarding pricing, setup costs, or licensing, as it was processed through the Marketplace and based on the savings model.

I have not seen a return on investment yet. I believe it will take another four to five months to get the return on investment.

My experience with the metering and billing has been very good.

There is nothing specific that I did not like about the metering and billing experience.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Spot. We were looking at other kinds of tools, but none had the same kind of features as Spot.

I purchased Spot through the AWS Marketplace .

My experience with Spot so far has shown a few noticeable changes. We are not renewing the new savings plan that we were doing earlier, and the changes we have been implementing have helped us to reduce some fraction of cost. However, I believe it will take another five to six months to reflect the actual savings since certain EC2  instances we are running still have an existing savings plan. Once those savings plans expire, we will be able to get the maximum savings out of it.

I find these two features quite useful for us and we have been using them. Spot is very new to us, and over the next few months, we may evaluate more features and possibly conduct a POC with those.

As of now, I can forecast approximately 5% to 7% cost savings that I have noticed.

Cost saving is the main benefit, and the manual effort required for reviewing and purchasing savings plans and other RIs is something we do not have to manage manually now, as we get automatic suggestions from Spot. This additional aspect has helped us significantly. It will take a few more months for us to further review the other features that this product has.

I rated Spot as a four out of five because storage optimization would make it a five for me.

My advice for others looking into using Spot is to definitely proceed with it for a more robust solution in terms of cost management. Spot helps manage savings plans and RIs that are difficult to handle manually. Leveraging the automation feature for managing Spot Instances can provide additional benefits.

We use Spot for optimization by leveraging real-time optimization as well as auto-optimization. The company allows organizations to achieve substantial savings on their cloud spend and helps realize a reduction in costs by 50 to 70 percent. It improves resource utilization and reliability, enhances agility by enabling teams to adapt seamlessly to changing demands, and supports FinOps practices for better financial governance. It integrates with major cloud providers such as AWS  and is available in the marketplace, allowing customers to benefit from decreased spend while sellers mutually benefit due to their compensation, which enables us to account plan and achieve the best outcome for the customer.

Overall, the main takeaway is that Spot helps the organization maximize efficiency while reducing costs across cloud environments.

Spot's automated cost optimization works by continuously analyzing the workload and applying policies to minimize cloud spend without sacrificing performance. Spot automatically chooses the most cost-effective mix of pricing models such as spot instances, reserved instances, savings plans, and on-demand based on real-time demand and availability.

Spot has positively impacted our organization by automating cloud resource management, which has significantly cut costs and improved efficiency. We have seen up to 70 percent savings, as well as better scalability, reliability, and tighter integration with AWS . This integration has opened several doors to the partner ecosystem, different marketplaces, and has allowed us to leverage programs while tapping into the Amazon network and ecosystem more effectively.

Positive

Positive