Cloud Exit Saves 37 Signals $1Million per Year!

We are big fans of 37 Signals, founded by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, here at Metify. It is a pleasure to share another great post from DHH on how they are already saving over $1Million/year by repatriating workloads from the public cloud.

Our cloud exit has already yielded $1m/year in savings

Getting our applications out of the cloud provided the main celebration for our exit, but seeing the actual spend tumble is the prize. The only way to get pricing in the cloud down from obscene to merely offensive is through reserved instances. This is where you sign up for a year or more in advance on a certain level of spend.

Our cloud spend (sans-S3) is down by 60% already. From around $180,000/month to less than $80,000. That's a cool million dollars in savings at the yearly run rate, and we have another big drop coming.

Now compare that to what we spent on buying our own servers. We had to buy about half a million dollars worth of new machines to replace all the cloud rentals. Which means that by the basic comparison of money saved vs money spent, we'll be in the money on the big purchase with the current monthly savings in less than six months.

Let's see where things end up when it's all said and done, but we don't have to squint hard to see the eventual savings climb all the way up to about $2m/year. That would be TEN MILLION DOLLARS over five years.