1. Kuala
Lumpur
Getting to Profitability
iCarAsia.com
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

2. About iCar Asia
! Our startup is just over 1 year old
• ASX listed w/market capitalization of ~AUD$180 million
• 200+ employees, across 3 countries
• 400,000+ cars, 3.2M UVs across all sites in September
! What do we do? We help people buy and sell cars.
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

3. iCar Asia on AWS
Consumer
Search
Seller
Portal
Core API
Portal API
Solr
CRM
Spec
DB
! How do we run on AWS?
• EC2, S3, Glacier, CloudFront, Elastic
Cache, Route 53, and VPC.
• Ansible, BitBucket, New Relic,
Monyog...
• The obligatory architecture
diagram!
Listings
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

4. How this helped us to build our
integrated portal faster…
! Stabilize
!
!
!
!
Add capacity
Build a low latency, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later culture
Single place, unified technology, common building blocks
Getting to profitability for startups:
• Cash is king – Manage your costs
• Use the building blocks at hand
• Leverage the AWS SAs and the people in this room…
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

5. Cumulative
annual spend.
Reserved
Instances vs. On
Demand pricing
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

6. Thank you !
AWS Cloud Kata for Start-Ups and Developers

7. Getting to Profitability

8. The Infamous Hockey Stick
Usage
Page Views
Revenue
Etc.
Time

9. The Infamous Hockey Stick
Usage
Page Views
Revenue
Etc.
Costs
Time

10. You want only 3 things

11. Revenue to go Up
Unit Costs to go Down
Margin to go Up

12. The Infamous Hockey Stick
Usage
Page Views
Revenue
Etc.
Costs
Time

13. How does AWS help here?

14. Economies of Scale
Pricing Models
Cost Aware Architecting

15. What does this look like in
the real world?

16. An example
!
!
!
!
!
!
Enterprise)so+ware)provider)in)APAC)
Focused)on)SaaS)for)storage,)security,)collabora=on,)etc.)
Backed)by)leading)VC’s)in)the)region)
Strong)growth)–)winning)customers)globally)
Focused)on)profitability)&)reducing)unit)costs)
Worked)closely)with)the)AWS)team)to)op=mize)its)architecture)

17. “Based on a True Story”
Margin
Growth
54%
reduction in
unit costs
-20%
-10%
price drop RI purchase
in S3
-22%
Migration
Cassandra
to Dynamo
-18%
Price drop in
S3 of 25%

18. Idea
MVP
Scale
Profitability
01
02
03
04

19. Scale
Getting to Profitability
Profitability
03
04
Pricing Models
Cost Aware Architecting
Total Cost of Ownership

20. Cost Optimization using different purchase models
Free Tier
On-Demand
Reserved
Spot
Get Started on AWS
with free usage & no
commitment
Pay for compute
capacity by the hour
with no long-term
commitments
Make a low, one-time
payment and receive a
significant discount on
the hourly charge
Bid for unused capacity,
charged at a Spot Price
which fluctuates based
on supply and demand
For POCs and
getting started
For spiky workloads,
or to define needs
For committed
utilization
For time-insensitive or
transient workloads

21. aws.amazon.com/activate

22. Reserved Instance Pricing
Make a low, one-time payment and receive a
significant discount on the hourly charge
For committed utilization
3 Versions
• Light Utilization RI
• Medium Utilization RI
• High Utilization RI
2 Terms
• 1-year
• 3-year

23. Reserved Instance Pricing
U"liza"on)
RI)op"on)
Savings)over)On4Demand)
<10%)
OnODemand)
10%)O)40%)
Light)U=liza=on)RI)
Up)to)56%)
40%)O)75%)
Medium)U=liza=on)RI)
Up)to)66%)
>75%)
Heavy)U=liza=on)RI)
Up)to)71%)

25. • Most traffic happens in the afternoons and evenings, so they reduce the number of
instances at night by 40%.
• At peak traffic $52 an hour is spent on EC2 and at night, during off peak, the spend is as
little as $15 an hour. Saving per hour = 71%

26. Save more money by using Spot Instances
Spot)market)for)underO
u=lized)capacity)
)
Requested)Bid)Price)and)
Pay)as)you)go)
Spot)Price)<)OnODemand)Price)))
Up)to)85%)savings)over)On)Demand)pricing)

27. Use Cases for Spot Pricing
Use)Case)
Batch)Processing)
Types)of)Applica"ons)
Generic)background)processing)(scale)out)compu=ng))
Hadoop)
Hadoop/MapReduce)processing)type)jobs)(e.g.)Search,)Big)Data,)etc.))
)
Scien"fic)Compu"ng)
Scien=fic)trials/simula=ons/analysis)in)chemistry,)physics,)and)biology)
Video)and)Image)Processing/
Rendering)
Tes"ng)
Transform)videos)into)specific)formats)
Web/Data)Crawling)
Financial)
HPC)
Analyzing)data)and)processing)it)
Hedgefund)analy=cs,)energy)trading,)etc)
U=lize)HPC)servers)to)do))embarrassingly)parallel)jobs)
Cheap)Compute)
Backend)servers)for)Facebook)games)
Provide)tes=ng)of)so+ware,)web)sites,)etc)

29. Optimizing Video Transcoding Workloads
for a FREEMIUM model
Premium Offering
Free Offering
Optimize for reducing cost
Acceptable Delay Limits
Optimized for Faster response
No Delays
)
Implementation
–
–
–
–
Leverage spot pricing
Maximum Bid Price
< On-demand Rate
Use on-demand Instances, if delay
Get strongly reduced price for your
workload
Implementation
– Invest in Reserved Instances
– Use on-demand for Elasticity
Get Instant Capacity for higher price

30. Scale
Getting to Profitability
Profitability
03
04
Pricing Models
Cost Aware Architecting
Total Cost of Ownership

31. “Give me 4 fault tolerant algorithms and I can pick
the best one almost with my eyes closed.
If you then ask me which one is best for the
business, in terms of dollar costs, I would be
clueless...”
Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon

32. Cost optimization through ‘Cost Aware Architecting’
Reduce Cost of…
Compute
…by leveraging:
1. S3 & CloudFront for Caching & Offloading
2. Auto-Scaling done Right
Storage
3. Storing derivative objects in S3 ‘Reduced Redundancy’
Database
4. Read Replicas and/or ElastiCache
Test & Dev
5. Rapid proto-typing & Lean Dev/Test

33. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
1. S3 & CloudFront for Caching & Offloading
• Reduce your compute demand and costs
• Improve end-user experience
• Increase reliability and durability

34. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
1. S3 & CloudFront for Caching & Offloading

35. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
1. S3 & CloudFront for Caching & Offloading

36. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
1. S3 & CloudFront for Caching & Offloading

37. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
1. S3 & CloudFront for Caching & Offloading

38. Static content
Dynamic calls

39. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
2. Auto-Scaling done Right with Real Time reaction response
• Elastic Load Balancing and (event-driven) Auto Scaling
• Notification of pending news flash (with audible alarm)
• On-demand ramp up of capacity (6 mins.)
• Subscriber alert push delivered
• Mass response traffic handled (followed by ramp down)

40. Buuuk for Singapore Press Holding (SPH)

41. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
2. Auto-Scaling done Right with Real Time reaction response
Buuuk
Straits Times

42. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
2. Auto-Scaling done Right with Real Time reaction response

43. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
2. Auto-Scaling done Right with Real Time reaction response

44. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
2. Auto-Scaling done Right with Real Time reaction response

45. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of EC2
2. Auto-Scaling done Right with Real Time reaction response

46. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of S3
3. Storing derivative objects in S3 ‘Reduced Redundancy’
• Original vs. derived assets : 33% savings
• Single reference and consistency
• Control, accurate logs and tracking
Reduced Redundancy Storage
‘RRS’

47. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of DB
4. Read Replicas and/or ElastiCache (‘Database Smarts’)
•
•
•
•
Scale out and share work
Optimal performance, minimize load
Enhance reliability, ensure data safety
Cost reduction

50. 90% of calls

51. Cost Aware Architecting to Reduce costs of Test/Dev
5. Rapid proto-typing & Lean Dev/Test
• Inexpensive idea validation
• Seamless switch over and versioning
• Rapid dev / test agility

52. Scale
Getting to Profitability
Profitability
03
04
Pricing Models
Cost Aware Architecting
Total Cost of Ownership

53. When)calcula"ng)TCO…)
#1)Start)by)understanding)your)use)cases)&)usage)paUerns)

54. Tradi=onal)HW)/)Hos=ng)
WASTE
On and Off
Fast Growth
Variable peaks
Predictable peaks
CUSTOMER DISSATISFACTION

55. AWS)=)Elas=c)Capacity)
On and Off
Fast Growth
Variable peaks
Predictable peaks

56. When)calcula"ng)TCO…)
#1)Start)by)understanding)your)use)cases)&)usage)paUerns)
#2)Apples)to)Apples)–)Take)all)the)fixed)costs)into)considera"on)

59. When)calcula"ng)TCO…)
#1)Start)by)understanding)your)use)cases)&)usage)paUerns)
#2)Apples)to)Apples)–)Take)all)the)fixed)costs)into)considera"on)
#3)Leverage)‘Cost)Aware)Architec"ng’)to)reduce)resources)

60. Tradi"onal)Hos"ng)vs)AWS)
# of
(virtual)
servers
60)
50)
40)
30)
20)
10)
0)
Hos=ng)
Hosting
Offload
to S3
Caching
with CF
AutoScaling
Etc.

61. When)calcula"ng)TCO…)
#1)Start)by)understanding)your)use)cases)&)usage)paUerns)
#2)Apples)to)Apples)–)Take)all)the)fixed)costs)into)considera"on)
#3)Leverage)‘Cost)Aware)Architec"ng’)to)reduce)resources)
#4)Include)pricing)models)(RI,)Spot))and)economies)of)scale)

62. “Based on a True Story”
Margin
Growth
54%
reduction in
unit costs
-20%
-10%
price drop RI purchase
in S3
-22%
Migration
Cassandra
to Dynamo
-18%
Price drop in
S3 of 25%

63. When)calcula"ng)TCO…)
#1)Start)by)understanding)your)use)cases)&)usage)paUerns)
#2)Apples)to)Apples)–)Take)all)the)fixed)costs)into)considera"on)
#3)Leverage)‘Cost)Aware)Architec"ng’)to)reduce)resources)
#4)Include)pricing)models)(RI,)Spot))and)economies)of)scale)
#5)Take)a)look)at)what’s)included:)Intangible)Cost)Savings)!)

64. Did you know?
Free Usage Tier
Free Services
Data Transfer
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS CloudFormation
AWS IAM
Auto Scaling
Consolidated Billing
No Charge for
New Customers
Amazon EC2
Amazon RDS
Amazon ELB
Amazon S3
Amazon EBS
For All Customers
Amazon SQS/SNS
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon SES
Amazon SWF
And more…
Inbound Data Transfer
Data Transfer between
Instances within an
Availability Zone

65. Trusted Advisor

66. A premium security spec at non-premium prices
•
VPC
•
Direct connect
and VPC
•
Dedicated instances
Network ACL
•
Identity & Access
•
Multi-Factor Authentication
Management
•
CloudHSM
S3 Encryption
•
RDS Oracle transparent
•
•
Security groups for EC2
encryption

67. DEMO)
Gegng)to)Profitability)
Off-loading of static content to CloudFront to reduce required
server capacity

68. So what does this mean in terms of costs?
Standard Architecture
Month
Medium EC2 instances 4
$ 485
AWS Data Transfer Out 1Tb $ 194
TOTAL
$ 679
Optimized Architecture
Month
Medium EC2 instances
1
$ 121
CloudFront Data Transfer Out 1Tb $ 168
CloudFront Requests
$1.89
TOTAL
$ 291
57% lower cost – 6 x faster

69. Thank You
aws.amazon.com/start4ups)
aws.amazon.com/ac"vate)