Conn’s HomePlus achieves nonstop savings with CloudFix
$85k saved in the first few weeksWe just set it and forget it.How the billion-dollar retailer dramatically reduces their AWS spend.
About Conn’s
Founded in 1890, Conn’s HomePlus started as a small mom-and-pop plumbing and heating company in Beaumont, Texas. Over the next 130 years, the company grew into one of the leading retailers of furniture, appliances, and consumer electronics in the Southern U.S., operating over 160 stores in 15 states, with over 4,100 employees.
Their guiding vision: that everyone deserves a home they love. To make that possible, Conn’s offers some of the best customer benefits in the industry — including unmatched, personalized payment options for everyone.
This “customer-first” focus runs deep at Conn’s HomePlus — so deep that it’s the first thing Jeremy Anderson, Cloud Architect at Conn’s, mentions: “My job is helping our company save money where we can so we can make bigger investments in our customer experience, so we can keep making bigger investments in our customer experience. Using CloudFix enables us to find and fix the biggest AWS savings opportunities.”
AWS powers digital transformation – at an unexpectedly high cost
Conn’s HomePlus began their move to AWS 4 years ago for a common reason. “The whole premise of moving to the cloud was to reduce operational costs“ Anderson said.
Two other initiatives made the move to the cloud (and controlling spend) even more urgent. “First, when Covid hit, we had to get people working at home as quickly as possible. At the same time, we were undergoing a huge digital transformation — adding major website modernizations to make it easier to place and track orders, and new ways for customers to pay online,” Anderson said.
With this new cloud innovation came a big surge in AWS spending — and the need for a solution like CloudFix to easily and automatically contain the costs.
“Honestly, we were expecting the cost to be lower after we migrated from on-prem to IaaS, but we discovered that in the cloud, storage and compute gets very pricey,” Anderson said. “So we went searching for the best way to optimize AWS costs.”
CloudFix actually fixes things, not just finds them. The team keeps on top of releasing new fixers that generate new savings for us regularly — and they’re all based on guidance from AWS, so we don’t have to focus on whether the recommendations are good or not. They just inherently are.
Finding (and achieving) instant AWS savings
Conn’s HomePlus discovered CloudFix at an AWS conference and decided to try it. “We started with a few of our higher spend accounts,” Anderson said. “CloudFix instantly found significant savings by transitioning our storage from GP2 to GP3. So we decided to let CloudFix find and fix savings across all of our AWS accounts, and that’s when we really started saving money.”
Before CloudFix, Anderson and team tried a range of other solutions. “Native AWS tools for optimizing costs just aren’t as accurate as we need them to be . . . and you have to be the doctor, looking at the problems meticulously to see if the recommendations are correct,” Anderson said.
That’s his favorite part of saving with CloudFix. “CloudFix actually fixes things, not just finds them,” Anderson said. “The team keeps on top of releasing new fixers that generate new savings for us regularly — and they’re all based on guidance from AWS, so we don’t have to focus on whether the recommendations are good or not. They just inherently are.”
Set it, forget it, and let the savings compound
According to Anderson, “you really do just ‘set CloudFix and forget it.’ CloudFix constantly looks at our new resources and finds and fixes opportunities to save on our AWS spend.”
For Conn’s HomePlus, the CloudFix implementation was incredibly easy, with zero safety concerns. “The ease was fantastic. I literally went into our AWS management account, allowed a few AWS-approved permissions, and that was it.”
Within a matter of minutes, CloudFix scanned every AWS instance across the entire Conn’s HomePlus infrastructure. “It was off to the races at that point,” Anderson said. “CloudFix just went to work finding and fixing big savings opportunities.”
On the first day, they found $10,000 in savings. That ballooned to over $85,000 in a matter of weeks. As the savings compound, Conn’s HomePlus expects to save much more over the next several years.
Today, Conn’s HomePlus finds savings nonstop
What does non-stop savings mean to Anderson, and to his Cloud Architecture team at Conn’s HomePlus? “We expect CloudFix to save us a tremendous amount of money with very little effort. We’re counting on the team to keep rolling out incredible new fixers. Most of the other AWS savings tools we tried promised this, but CloudFix actually delivered.”
His advice for other companies considering CloudFix: “I would tell them the (CloudFix) savings far outweigh the price”
CloudFix saves us a tremendous amount of money with very little effort. We’re counting on the team to keep rolling out incredible new fixers. Most of the other AWS savings tools we tried promised this, but CloudFix actually delivered.
