How Kaltura Achieved Risk-Free Savings and Effortless Cloud Cost Management with Zesty
“Ultimately Zesty was better and more cost efficient than other cloud discount offerings. If that weren’t the case we wouldn’t have moved over to Zesty. Yes, it reduces the workload as well, but it’s the cost reduction that makes it all worth it. The fact that I don’t have to do anything as well makes it even better.”
“Zesty was very easy to onboard, I only needed to create an IAM role and it works. I don’t need to do anything to get it to work, it just works in the background.”
“The security stakes with Zesty are very low, there’s no risk to customer data because Zesty doesn’t have any access to customer data. Permissions are highly limited.”
Customer
Brief
Kaltura is a SaaS-based video creation, management, and distribution service. Their real-time on-demand video products are used by millions of individuals from a variety of industries worldwide such as media services, educational institutions, large enterprise organizations, and more. Their products power video experiences and workflows to improve communication, training, collaboration, learning, customer onboarding, and more.
Key
Challenges
Difficulty getting visibility into cost allocations as well as seasonal peaks in usage resulted in Kaltura having difficulty maximizing discounts and relying heavily on On-Demand workloads.
Key
Results
With Zesty, Kaltura was able to cover 97% of their workloads with discount programs, saving them 40% on the cloud without any engineering effort.
The Challenge:
Because Kaltura was already invested in cloud cost optimization, the company was utilizing cloud savings programs to achieve significant discounts on their cloud expenditure. While the team was pleased with how easy these savings programs were to set up and how quickly the savings kicked in, there were some drawbacks of using this method.
Firstly, it was difficult to get insights and visibility into cost allocations, which resulted in the team having very little insight into cost attribution, both in terms of how much they’re paying or what exactly they’re paying for. To understand how much of a discount they were receiving, they were using native cloud cost visualization and management tools as well as other third party tools to drill down into specific instances, find the instance type and processor, and then compare it to their cloud provider’s pricing list.
Since the team was managing over 60 accounts, there was a ton of information to go through and millions of dollars of spend to allocate. Analyzing it all was a lot of work and took them away from core development activities.
Secondly, the nature of Kaltura’s product meant that their customers frequently caused peaks in usage. For example, those in the education sector experienced peaks at the beginning of the school year, throughout September and October. The DevOps team didn’t want to run short term events like these on highly discounted savings programs because that would require committing to programs that wouldn’t be used throughout most of the year. Instead, they chose to pay the premium price for these temporary usage spikes.
Zesty’s Solution:
After a deep analysis of their potential cloud savings, Kaltura found that they would achieve a better discount with Zesty than with the discount offerings they were already using. Yet even more importantly, working with Zesty would remove the hassle of managing their discount programs.
The team looked into alternative tools, but found that their saving potential was not as great. Furthermore, it required an in depth analysis to allocate discounts to the appropriate workloads and Kaltura was looking for a solution that would reduce their manual workload.
Another factor easing deployment was security. Being a public company, Kaltura needs to make sure that any vendor they onboard, is adhering to the highest security protocols. Kaltura’s SOC team sent a security questionnaire which Zesty passed with flying colors on pen-test results. Zesty treads very lightly on customer infrastructure, it only requires IAM role permissions to access the billing account and does not interact with the EC2 instance. This means it doesn’t require any code changes or touch any customer data. As there was very little security risk, Kaltura’s SOC team gave the green light on Zesty’s solution.
Using Zesty, Kaltura was able to leverage the cloud savings programs to cover their customer’s peak usage periods without the concern of them going unused throughout the majority of the year.
The onboarding was simple and straightforward. There was no need to crawl through all their workloads and identify behavioral patterns to match workloads with the suitable savings program. Instead, all workloads were allocated to a savings program that offered one of the highest levels of discounts, and Zesty manages the financial risk of the program not being utilized. When there is a lot of activity, Zesty buys more savings program “tokens” and when there is reduced activity those “tokens’ ‘ are sold off.
For constant workloads that Kultura maintains throughout the year, they continue to manage the savings programs for these on their own. Zesty gives the right-of-way to ensure these savings programs get fully utilized, and only manages the remainder. This way, Kaltura maintains optimal value from their previously made investments.
The Result:
Once onboarded the savings started immediately, quickly meeting their previous savings ceiling and gradually surpassing it. Kaltura now covers 97% of their suitable workloads and is saving around 40% on their cloud expenditure.
In addition to ample savings on the cloud, Kaltura achieved these numbers with absolutely minimal effort. Once connected, the savings started to automatically roll in. They no longer have to do a monthly review to try and get visibility into savings. The management of savings programs now involves just a monthly review to reconcile Zesty savings with their native cloud cost visualization tools. At just the touch of a button they also have a breakdown of each of their instances, the degree to which it is covered with a savings program, the costs it generates, and the respective savings.
Due to the combination of optimal savings and the minimal effort involved, Kaltura is gradually covering more of their workloads with Zesty as their pre-purchased saving programs expire. Today, Zesty has been scaled out across Kaltura’s entire infrastructure where every business unit in R&D has at least some of their workloads optimized with Zesty. Allowing these teams to safely offload the regular management and oversight that is otherwise required.
Bottom line– with Zesty, Kaltura is able to achieve the highest cloud discounts available with no risk and no effort, making it a clear ‘no-brainer’.
Customer
Brief
Kaltura is a SaaS-based video creation, management, and distribution service. Their real-time on-demand video products are used by millions of individuals from a variety of industries worldwide such as media services, educational institutions, large enterprise organizations, and more. Their products power video experiences and workflows to improve communication, training, collaboration, learning, customer onboarding, and more.
Key
Challenges
Difficulty getting visibility into cost allocations as well as seasonal peaks in usage resulted in Kaltura having difficulty maximizing discounts and relying heavily on On-Demand workloads.
Key
Results
With Zesty, Kaltura was able to cover 97% of their workloads with discount programs, saving them 40% on the cloud without any engineering effort.
“Ultimately Zesty was better and more cost efficient than other cloud discount offerings. If that weren’t the case we wouldn’t have moved over to Zesty. Yes, it reduces the workload as well, but it’s the cost reduction that makes it all worth it. The fact that I don’t have to do anything as well makes it even better.”
Because Kaltura was already invested in cloud cost optimization, the company was utilizing cloud savings programs to achieve significant discounts on their cloud expenditure. While the team was pleased with how easy these savings programs were to set up and how quickly the savings kicked in, there were some drawbacks of using this method.
Firstly, it was difficult to get insights and visibility into cost allocations, which resulted in the team having very little insight into cost attribution, both in terms of how much they’re paying or what exactly they’re paying for. To understand how much of a discount they were receiving, they were using native cloud cost visualization and management tools as well as other third party tools to drill down into specific instances, find the instance type and processor, and then compare it to their cloud provider’s pricing list.
Since the team was managing over 60 accounts, there was a ton of information to go through and millions of dollars of spend to allocate. Analyzing it all was a lot of work and took them away from core development activities.
Secondly, the nature of Kaltura’s product meant that their customers frequently caused peaks in usage. For example, those in the education sector experienced peaks at the beginning of the school year, throughout September and October. The DevOps team didn’t want to run short term events like these on highly discounted savings programs because that would require committing to programs that wouldn’t be used throughout most of the year. Instead, they chose to pay the premium price for these temporary usage spikes.
“Zesty was very easy to onboard, I only needed to create an IAM role and it works. I don’t need to do anything to get it to work, it just works in the background.”
After a deep analysis of their potential cloud savings, Kaltura found that they would achieve a better discount with Zesty than with the discount offerings they were already using. Yet even more importantly, working with Zesty would remove the hassle of managing their discount programs.
The team looked into alternative tools, but found that their saving potential was not as great. Furthermore, it required an in depth analysis to allocate discounts to the appropriate workloads and Kaltura was looking for a solution that would reduce their manual workload.
Another factor easing deployment was security. Being a public company, Kaltura needs to make sure that any vendor they onboard, is adhering to the highest security protocols. Kaltura’s SOC team sent a security questionnaire which Zesty passed with flying colors on pen-test results. Zesty treads very lightly on customer infrastructure, it only requires IAM role permissions to access the billing account and does not interact with the EC2 instance. This means it doesn’t require any code changes or touch any customer data. As there was very little security risk, Kaltura’s SOC team gave the green light on Zesty’s solution.
Using Zesty, Kaltura was able to leverage the cloud savings programs to cover their customer’s peak usage periods without the concern of them going unused throughout the majority of the year.
The onboarding was simple and straightforward. There was no need to crawl through all their workloads and identify behavioral patterns to match workloads with the suitable savings program. Instead, all workloads were allocated to a savings program that offered one of the highest levels of discounts, and Zesty manages the financial risk of the program not being utilized. When there is a lot of activity, Zesty buys more savings program “tokens” and when there is reduced activity those “tokens’ ‘ are sold off.
For constant workloads that Kultura maintains throughout the year, they continue to manage the savings programs for these on their own. Zesty gives the right-of-way to ensure these savings programs get fully utilized, and only manages the remainder. This way, Kaltura maintains optimal value from their previously made investments.
Once onboarded the savings started immediately, quickly meeting their previous savings ceiling and gradually surpassing it. Kaltura now covers 97% of their suitable workloads and is saving around 40% on their cloud expenditure.
In addition to ample savings on the cloud, Kaltura achieved these numbers with absolutely minimal effort. Once connected, the savings started to automatically roll in. They no longer have to do a monthly review to try and get visibility into savings. The management of savings programs now involves just a monthly review to reconcile Zesty savings with their native cloud cost visualization tools. At just the touch of a button they also have a breakdown of each of their instances, the degree to which it is covered with a savings program, the costs it generates, and the respective savings.
Due to the combination of optimal savings and the minimal effort involved, Kaltura is gradually covering more of their workloads with Zesty as their pre-purchased saving programs expire. Today, Zesty has been scaled out across Kaltura’s entire infrastructure where every business unit in R&D has at least some of their workloads optimized with Zesty. Allowing these teams to safely offload the regular management and oversight that is otherwise required.
Bottom line– with Zesty, Kaltura is able to achieve the highest cloud discounts available with no risk and no effort, making it a clear ‘no-brainer’.
“The security stakes with Zesty are very low, there’s no risk to customer data because Zesty doesn’t have any access to customer data. Permissions are highly limited.”
“I no longer need to worry about managing EBS volumes, that’s Zesty’s job now”
Artiom Levinton
Head of DevOps
“Zesty Disk are more than a software, they’re a key part of our team.”
Sanjeev Kishore Yarnapati
Principal Cloud Architect
“Zesty has allowed us to reduce our overhead. We now have a zero point deviation from cost KPIs”
Manoj Srikantaiah
Lead DevOps Engineer
