Phenix realizes the benefits of AWS discounts thanks to Flexsave for Compute

April 2022

Food waste reduction platform saves 26% on AWS costs while DevOps team focuses on building functionality

26%: savings on on-demand AWS usage

“All the time needed to manage cloud compute costs is time that could be spent doing other things. Without Flexsave for Compute, we probably wouldn't be able to use Reserved Instances at all; now we can get the savings benefits with almost no effort whatsoever. We just turned it on and were able to forget about it, which allows us to focus on building out the other functionalities within the Phenix platform.”
Kyâne Pichou
DevOps Team Lead, Phenix

The Challenge

Phenix's small DevOps team faced a difficult choice between saving money on AWS infrastructure and focusing on engineering work. Managing Reserved Instances or Savings Plans would detract from their ability to build and scale their platform. The challenge would worsen as they expanded to new countries, with more time needed for infrastructure management and risk of underutilization penalties.

The Solution

DoiT International provided Flexsave for Compute, which delivers savings equivalent to a 1-year Savings Plan without commitments or management overhead. The solution runs entirely in the background with no maintenance needed from the Phenix DevOps team. After enabling it in July 2021, they haven't needed to make any adjustments.

Results

Realizes benefits of Reserved Instances and Savings Plans without signing a commitment
Enjoys 26% savings on on-demand AWS usage since enabling Flexsave for Compute
DevOps team spends time building and optimizing platform instead of managing usage rates

Meet Phenix

Phenix confronts the challenges of food insecurity and food waste through a number of ventures, including a consumer-facing application that offers buyers discounted rates on groceries that would otherwise be discarded by local retailers. With over 15,000 retail partners and 3.5 million users, the app requires significant investment in infrastructure and optimization efforts from Phenix's DevOps team.

The Infrastructure Challenge

Like many other ecommerce platforms, one of the biggest challenges Phenix faces is ensuring that the inventory listed on their application is always up to date. This requires extensive database functionality, for which they primarily use the AWS Relational Database Service (RDS). Building that application and scaling it to meet the current demand posed challenges for the small DevOps team at Phenix when it came to availing of AWS discount opportunities.

The Cost Management Dilemma

The full-time management of their Reserved Instances or Savings Plans would have detracted from their ability to complete the necessary engineering and operational work, forcing them to choose between saving money and actually growing their products and business. The challenge would complicate efforts to scale the company and its DevOps capabilities, with the DevOps team devoting even more time to managing Phenix's growing infrastructure portfolio as it expanded to new countries and built new functionality.

Flexsave for Compute Solution

Understanding these challenges before building their platform enabled the Phenix DevOps team to proactively seek a way to realize infrastructure savings without commitments or labor-intensive usage management. DoiT International provided the solution with Flexsave for Compute, which provides the savings equivalent of a 1-year Savings Plan, thereby empowering Phenix to take advantage of AWS discounts that would otherwise have been unattainable for them.

Automated Savings Without Management

In addition to generating significant savings for Phenix, Flexsave for Compute runs entirely in the background with no maintenance or management needed from the Phenix DevOps team. After enabling it in July of 2021, they haven't had to make any adjustments; Flexsave for Compute runs on autopilot and the savings appear on Phenix's AWS bill each month.

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Story overview

What they say

DoiT was a true partner, not a vendor. They helped us understand the problem, refine the vision, and build something production-ready far faster than we could have on our own. Their expertise, responsiveness, and commitment made all the difference.

Dr. Anish Kapur, Founder & CEO, Promptly

DoiT's Customer Success and Forward Deployed Engineering teams work very closely with us. The regular sessions with our CSM keep us focused on the right priorities, and the FDEs provide the deep technical guidance we need to validate decisions and optimize our environment. That combination has been genuinely valuable for us.

Alexander Lundberg Santos, Platform Engineer at Extenda Retail

When we started working with DoiT, we deployed Flexsave to save time and reduce complexity. We still use it today. But what really stands out is the expert support. Having someone to collaborate with on deep cloud cost topics, someone who really understands the nuances, is incredibly valuable.

Jesper Terkelsen, CTO at Monta

DoiT's Cloud Accelerator turned our AI idea into a shipped product, saving at least three months of development and delivering reliable, explainable insights our customers trust.

Scott Desgrosseilliers, CEO and co-founder, Wicked Reports

DaySmart

Working with DoiT gave us the speed of a startup and the rigor of an enterprise R&D lab. We launched an AI feature in ninety days with zero engineering lift, unified our cloud visibility across multiple products and built a foundation to scale AI responsibly.

Tim Green, SVP of AI, DaySmart

Our AWS environment had grown rapidly, and complexity was outpacing control. DoiT helped us bring structure and clarity, aligning financial and technical decisions through a shared foundation.

Maurizio Trezzi, Director of IT, Vivaticket

DoiT gives us contextual insight into what's happening in our cloud environment. That helps us ensure we're meeting customer needs while managing our costs. It's that central pane of glass that lets engineering and finance work together, powered by the technology and backed by DoiT's people.

Matt Warner, Co-Founder and CEO at Blumira

For anyone considering DoiT: do it. The tools pay for themselves. We've reduced costs, improved visibility, and built a platform that can scale globally with control and confidence.

Matej Serbec, CTO, TradeLocker

DoiT didn't just give us a product – they gave us clarity. Cloud Diagrams has helped our teams understand what we're running, why we're running it, and where we can improve. The real-time visibility is a game changer for engineering, leadership, and everything in between.

Donnie Green, VP of Platform Engineering, Bloomerang

Sentric Music

With maybe 5-10 minutes, Ava had guided me right down into the low-level detail of the services that we were running in our compute environment, named the exact instances that were starting to chew through our money, produced a report for me that showed that this was almost a direct correlation to the cost growth that we were seeing, which meant that we were able to get on top of it pretty much immediately.

Stephen Roughley, Head of Engineering at Sentric Music

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With DoiT Cloud Intelligence™ managing our procurement and DoiT's engineers acting as an extension of my team, my costs are down, my efficiency is up, and my profitability is up

Mitch Bernet, Founder and CEO at Atadex

Skyral

A key takeaway for me working with DoiT is that the level of professionalism is extremely high. They're an obvious choice if you're looking for a partner to help implement best practices in your cloud environment and reduce cost.

Oliver Young, Senior Technical Manager at Skyral

We knew WhatsApp was the perfect channel for global remittances, but building secure, real-time conversations across languages was a massive challenge. DoiT helped us break through. They didn't just advise, they helped us architect and launch a GenAI solution that's 100x more powerful than what we had. We're now in a completely different league.

Jaime Gonzalez-Gasque, CEO, Reimagination Technologies

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