HEC Media — From hidden AWS cost to decision-ready roadmap

Results at a glance

Metric	Target	Identified	Status
Monthly AWS savings	$1,050 / mo (30%)	$1,483 / mo (42.4%)	Exceeded target by $433 / mo
Decommission scope	—	17 services scoped, 22 marked do-not-touch	Audit complete
Delivery throughput	—	16 deliverables, 15 PDFs, 4 portal uploads	Confirmed
Implementation outcome	—	Awaiting May 6 production validation	Pending

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The problem

HEC Media needed three things at once: a clear picture of a complex AWS environment, a safe plan to decommission educate.today without breaking shared services, and a credible path to lowering roughly $3,500 / month in AWS spend.

The operational challenge was not just cost — it was dependency risk.

• Multiple subdomains pointed at shared infrastructure
• Some services were exclusive to educate.today; others were shared HEC Media assets that could not be touched
• The client needed written, decision-ready deliverables before any change execution

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The approach

YT Advisors applied a five-step audit-and-roadmap process:

1. Inventory — catalog every AWS service and map dependencies
2. Separate — split exclusive educate.today resources from shared HEC Media assets
3. Document — write down decommission risk before recommending changes
4. Quantify — translate findings into specific, dollar-denominated savings opportunities
5. Package — produce implementation-ready recommendations, with execution gated behind formal approval

The work was intentionally conservative. It produced visibility first, then a roadmap — not an unapproved production change.

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The outcomes

KPI 1 — Monthly AWS cost reduction

Item	Value
Baseline monthly AWS cost	$3,500
Client target	30% / $1,050 / mo
Identified savings	$1,483.14 / mo
Reduction vs baseline	42.4%
Amount above target	+$433.14 / mo
Status	Projected, awaiting May 6 production validation

KPI 2 — Decommission readiness (confirmed)

• 82 S3 buckets inventoried
• 17 educate.today-exclusive buckets scoped for decommission
• 22 shared buckets marked do-not-touch
• 19 educate.today-exclusive CloudFront distributions identified
• 4 Elastic Beanstalk environments mapped
• 3 RDS instances scoped
• Direct-IP dependencies documented for critical subdomains

KPI 3 — Delivery throughput (confirmed)

• 16 published client-review deliverables
• 15 PDF exports
• 4 successful WordPress portal uploads, zero errors

KPI 4 — Implementation outcome (pending)

Not yet measurable from workspace evidence. Awaiting:

• Before / after AWS bills
• Production change logs
• Live KPI dashboard screenshots
• Post–May 6 validation artifacts

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What was in the package

19 distinct deliverables, organized into four streams.

Audits

• AWS service inventory
• DNS, SSL, S3, RDS, IAM audits
• Network security audit

Dependency maps

• Shared-resource dependency map
• educate.today architecture + dependency map

Roadmaps

• Staged decommission plan + playbook
• Cost optimization summary

Tooling enablement

• CI/CD optimization package
• IaC + AI-assisted development tooling package

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Interim conclusion

YT Advisors rapidly delivered a full AWS audit, dependency map, and cost-reduction roadmap for HEC Media — identifying savings potential that exceeded the client’s target while keeping execution gated behind formal approval.

The realized-outcomes story will land after May 6 production validation. This brief covers the audit-and-planning stage.

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After May 6 — outcome validation checklist

When verified post-implementation evidence becomes available, this brief will be updated with:

• Actual monthly AWS spend, before and after
• Documented savings realized in production
• Completed decommission status for all 17 educate.today services
• Before / after reliability, latency, or uptime metrics
• Client quote for external publication