Driving Cloud Cost Efficiency for Higher Education
How do you turn cloud spending visibility into measurable savings? When a private New England university struggled with reserved instance underutilization, cost allocation, and governance, it turned to TD SYNNEX for a comprehensive analysis of its AWS environment. Read the full customer story to apply these strategies to your organization.
How can we get better control over cloud costs in higher education?
TD SYNNEX Public Sector helps universities rethink cloud cost management by starting with a detailed analysis of your current cloud spend. This includes:
- Reviewing existing usage patterns and cost structures
- Identifying underutilized resources and missed savings opportunities
- Clarifying which teams, departments, or funding sources are driving specific costs
From there, they provide tailored recommendations to:
- Optimize how Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans are purchased and used
- Improve cost visibility so you can accurately allocate expenses to departments and grants
- Strengthen financial governance and planning around cloud investments
The result is a more predictable and transparent cloud cost model that aligns your cloud usage with your operational and financial goals.
What kind of savings and optimizations are realistic?
Based on work with a private New England university, TD SYNNEX Public Sector helped the institution:
- Increase RI and Savings Plan savings by 20%, reaching nearly 100% coverage
- Cut RDS (Relational Database Service) expenses by 50%
- Optimize CloudFront costs, storage, and CPU utilization across their environment
These outcomes came from:
- Right-sizing resources to match actual usage
- Shifting from a highly risk-averse, under-committed posture to a more data-driven commitment strategy
- Improving visibility into which services and teams were driving costs
While exact results will vary by institution, these figures show what’s possible when cloud usage patterns and financial strategy are closely aligned.
How does TD SYNNEX Public Sector work with education institutions specifically?
TD SYNNEX Public Sector focuses on the federal, state, local, and education markets and is positioned as a government solutions aggregator. For higher education, this means they understand:
- Complex funding sources (grants, departmental budgets, central IT funding)
- The need to accurately allocate and report cloud costs to different stakeholders
- Governance requirements around public and institutional funds
They help institutions reimagine cloud governance by combining technical optimization (RIs, Savings Plans, storage, CPU, content delivery) with financial clarity and accountability.
How to engage:
This provides a starting point to assess your current cloud environment and explore a structured cost optimization and governance plan.