Cluey Cuts Costs 10% with eCloudvalley & AWS Well-Architected

Since it was founded in 2017, Cluey has delivered over 1 million tutoring sessions to more than 33,000 students throughout Australia and New Zealand. Cluey takes the security of its students’ data very seriously, and as the company grew, it also needed to scale its cloud infrastructure more efficiently. Cluey wanted a clear way to increase visibility into security events and rightsize its infrastructure. However, it required additional guidance to develop and implement effective solutions.

“Security is always an important aspect for every business,” says Arman Obeidy, ANZ country manager at ECV AU. “Cluey works with schools and students, and when you are handling sensitive information like this, security becomes even more important. Cluey also wanted to look at where it could avoid waste and generally optimize costs.”

Cluey recognized an opportunity for transformation when ECV AU approached the company with a proposal to conduct an AWS Well-Architected Framework Review. Built around six pillars—operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability—AWS Well-Architected provides a consistent approach for companies to evaluate architectures and implement scalable designs. “The security and cost efficiency challenges were always in the back of my mind,” says Timo Krause, head of IT at Cluey. “When Arman explained how it could help address these specific areas through a structured review process, it clicked immediately.”

During the AWS Well-Architected Framework Review, ECV AU and Cluey focused on two pillars: security and cost optimization. With this strategic approach, the teams were able to dive deeper into Cluey’s extremely pressing challenges rather than conducting a broad but shallow assessment across all six pillars. The assessment began with a thorough discovery process.

“ECV AU took us through all the steps for the AWS Well-Architected Framework Review. It sent us a comprehensive sheet, which we filled in with information about our business, our infrastructure, and what we were seeking to optimize,” says Krause. “Then, we started the interview process. It was about 4 hours of interviews where we had different meetings with various people in the organization to drill down into the details of our challenges. The purpose of those meetings was to understand where our issues are, what their root cause is, and how we can address them.”

Following the AWS Well-Architected Framework Review, ECV AU provided Cluey with an action plan that listed security events according to their severity and potential impact. Then, the teams participated in collaborative remediation sessions, where they implemented solutions to address high-priority issues. To gain continual visibility into its security posture, Cluey adopted services such as AWS Security Hub, which automates AWS security checks and centralizes security alerts, and AWS Config, which assesses, audits, and evaluates configurations of AWS resources. On the cost-optimization front, the teams configured automated shutdown schedules for development and staging environments during nights and weekends. ECV AU also helped Cluey develop a resource tagging system to better track and allocate costs.

By implementing AWS Well-Architected best practices, Cluey realized immediate and substantial benefits. The company reduced its AWS infrastructure costs by optimizing resource usage and implementing automated shutdowns. This optimization has freed up resources that Cluey can now redirect toward enhancing its educational services.

This process has also helped create awareness throughout the Cluey team about different aspects of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which lets developers understand the pros and cons of the decisions they make while building systems on AWS. “Thanks to our work with ECV AU on the AWS Well-Architected Framework Review, we have optimized our process and reduced infrastructure costs by 10 percent,” says Krause. “I’m really pleased with the change in both the team and the culture.”

On the security front, the improvements were equally significant. Cluey gained about 90 percent visibility into its security posture with near real-time monitoring. Cluey’s security team can now identify potential issues more quickly—compared with its previous point-in-time assessments—and remediate them before they affect customers. By enhancing its security practices, Cluey can maintain compliance with data protection standards, thus strengthening trust with the students, families, and educators who rely on its service.

Cluey Learning (Cluey) is an Australian online tutoring company that connects students in years two through twelve with qualified tutors. Founded in 2017 and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2020, Cluey has delivered over 1 million tutoring sessions to more than 33,000 students.