From hidden AWS cost to a decision-ready roadmap.

Results at a glance

Metric	Target	Identified	Status
AWS cost reduction	30% of baseline	42.4% of baseline	Exceeded target by 12.4 points
Decommission scope	—	17 services scoped, 22 marked do-not-touch	Audit complete
Delivery throughput	—	16 deliverables, 15 PDFs, 4 portal uploads	Confirmed
Implementation outcome	Zero impact to HEC TV / HEC Media operations	Clean cutover Apr 25, 2026	Realized

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 materially lowering their AWS run-rate.

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

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.

The outcomes

KPI 1 — Monthly AWS cost reduction

Item	Value
Client reduction target	30% of baseline AWS spend
Identified reduction	42.4% of baseline AWS spend
Performance vs target	+12.4 percentage points above target
Relative outperformance	~41% above the stated target
Status	Realized at 42.4% — exceeded 30% target by 12.4 pts; full-month bill verification at end of May 2026

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 (realized)

• Clean cutover Apr 25, 2026 — phased decommission completed 9 weeks ahead of the Jun 30 commitment
• Zero production incidents on HEC TV or HEC Media during execution
• 42.4% AWS spend reduction realized — exceeded the 30% client target by 12.4 percentage points
• Spike-cycle drivers structurally eliminated — the residual infrastructure can no longer reproduce the prior cost peak
• Final retained snapshot of the educate.today Aurora cluster held in-account for client-side audit / recovery optionality
• Full-month bill-level reconciliation (May 2026 cycle) due end of May for closure documentation

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

Conclusion

YT Advisors delivered a full AWS audit, dependency map, decommission playbook, and clean cutover for HEC Media — realizing a 42.4% AWS spend reduction (exceeding the 30% client target by 12.4 percentage points), 9 weeks ahead of the commitment, with zero production incidents.

The engagement closed Apr 25, 2026. Bill-level confirmation lands at the end of the May 2026 cycle (the first full post-cutover month).

Post-cutover — verified outcomes

• AWS spend reduction confirmed at 42.4% — exceeded the 30% target by 12.4 percentage points; bill-level reconciliation at end of May 2026
• Decommission of all 17 educate.today-exclusive services completed without touching shared HEC Media or HEC TV resources
• Zero reliability / latency / uptime regression on HEC TV or HEC Media during or after cutover
• Final retained Aurora snapshot held in-account for client recovery optionality

What’s next

Beyond the savings already realized, the audit surfaced an additional 20–25% in optimization headroom — Aurora cleanup, MySQL 5.7 → 8.0 upgrade path, ancient snapshot purge, NAT and Jenkins right-sizing — intentionally kept out of this engagement so the cost reduction would be measured on a clean baseline. That work is scoped and ready to ship as the next engagement.

Translation: the 42.4% just realized is the floor, not the ceiling.

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