After merging 14 companies under one umbrella, a national insurance firm set out to modernize its infrastructure with a large-scale Azure migration. The goal was clear: streamline operations, boost agility, and reduce reliance on aging colocation facilities.
But as the cloud bills rolled in, it became clear that consolidation alone wasn’t enough.
With costs climbing fast and complexity growing across a fragmented Azure environment, the firm needed expert help to regain control and unlock the value the cloud was meant to deliver.
Here’s how Maintech helped turn a sprawling, expensive cloud footprint into a streamlined, cost-efficient foundation for growth.
A Complex Cloud Challenge Across 14 Companies
When the insurance firm completed its Azure migration, it had successfully brought together infrastructure from 14 previously separate companies. On paper, this was a major step forward. In practice, the complexity was just beginning.
The Root of the Problem
With no standardized approach across entities, the Azure environment quickly became:
- Inconsistent: Naming conventions, VM sizing, and configurations varied wildly
- Untraceable: No clear ownership or cost attribution across departments
- Bloated: Legacy systems and duplicated services inflated resource usage
What looked like a successful cloud migration soon revealed a deeper issue: consolidation without governance.
Cloud Sprawl, Reimagined
Although the firm had left behind its colocation facilities, it had unknowingly recreated the same sprawl – just in the cloud.
The business needed to regain control of its environment. That meant more than just reducing the number of servers; it required a strategy built on visibility, standardization, and smart cost management.
Enterprise-Grade Consolidation, Powered by Azure
Once Maintech had a clear picture of the client’s Azure environment, it was clear that simply lifting and shifting workloads wasn’t enough. The environment needed rationalization and rightsizing, with an emphasis on efficiency and scalability.
Breaking Down the Bloat
Maintech helped the client:
- Identify redundant workloads that were duplicated across business units
- Right-size virtual machines by analyzing their actual CPU, memory, and storage usage patterns, eliminating the “just in case” overprovisioning that was inflating compute costs
- Eliminate legacy servers that had been carried over from colocation unnecessarily
This helped reduce infrastructure demands significantly, but optimization didn’t stop there.
Shifting from IaaS to PaaS
Many applications were still running on full virtual machines using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). This meant the client managed everything from the operating system up.
We advised them that cloud-native Platform as a Service (PaaS) alternatives offered more flexibility at a lower cost. PaaS solutions handle the underlying infrastructure management, allowing the business to focus on their applications rather than server maintenance.
By migrating selected workloads to Azure PaaS offerings, Maintech helped the firm:
- Reduce licensing and operating system overhead by eliminating the need to purchase and maintain Windows Server licenses for each virtual machine
- Simplify management and patching by transferring infrastructure responsibilities to Azure’s managed services
- Take advantage of the platform’s built-in scalability
This shift delivered major performance benefits while helping trim the next chunk of cloud spend.
Cutting Costs Without Sacrificing Functionality
With the infrastructure consolidated and modernized, the next priority was cost efficiency. Maintech worked closely with the firm to identify hidden waste.
What Was Driving Up Costs?
A detailed audit revealed a mix of inefficiencies common in post-migration environments:
- Oversized virtual machines: Resources were overprovisioned “just in case,” leading to inflated compute costs
- Always-on dev/test environments: Non-production systems ran 24/7, consuming unnecessary resources
- Orphaned resources: Unused disks, network interfaces, and backups from legacy workloads still lingered
- Premium storage misuse: High-cost storage was allocated to apps that didn’t need it
Smart Optimization in Action
To tackle these issues without affecting performance, Maintech implemented:
- Right-sizing policies to match VM capacity with real usage patterns
- Auto-start/stop schedules for non-critical environments
- Clean-up protocols to detect and decommission idle or forgotten resources
- Tiered storage aligned with application needs
These changes alone helped reduce monthly Azure spend from $174,000 to $145,000, achieving a $29,000 monthly saving just by eliminating waste and aligning resources to real usage.
Leveraging Azure Savings Plans & Governance
After reclaiming nearly $30,000 per month through infrastructure optimization, the next challenge was long-term control. Without a solid governance framework, costs could easily creep back up. Maintech helped the insurance firm take the next step by embedding structure and visibility into how their Azure environment was managed.
Starting with Standardization
Maintech introduced naming conventions and tagging practices that made it easy to understand what every resource was, who owned it, and how it contributed to the business. Where previously there had been guesswork and manual tracking, now there was clarity.
With governance in place, the firm gained real accountability across departments and could finally tie cloud spend to business outcomes.
Azure Cost-Saving Features
Maintech also helped implement Azure cost-saving features that had previously gone unused. Reserved Instances were introduced for predictable workloads, and Azure Hybrid Benefit was correctly configured to stop the client from paying twice for licenses they already owned. Budget alerts and usage thresholds were established to catch anomalies early and prevent runaway spending before it started.
These changes weren’t just administrative; they delivered tangible impact. Monthly Azure costs dropped again, from $145,000 to $117,000, taking total savings to $57,000 per month.
Outcome: Scalable, Secure, and $57K Cheaper Per Month
By the end of the engagement, the insurance firm wasn’t just spending less – they had complete control over their Azure environment for the first time.
Monthly cloud costs had dropped from $174,000 to $117,000, a total reduction of $57,000 per month. But the results went far beyond cost.
With a structured Azure governance framework in place, the firm could scale with confidence. Teams had visibility into what they were using, budgets were respected, and infrastructure changes followed consistent rules. The environment became easier to manage, more secure, and aligned with industry compliance expectations.
Perhaps most importantly, the cloud had gone from a source of spiraling spend to a strategic asset.
Is Your Azure Environment Working for You?
Maintech helps businesses in complex, highly regulated industries take control of their cloud infrastructure through smart governance, structured cost optimization, and expert support.
Want to see how much you could save?
Contact us today about booking your own Azure spend review with us.
