Meet 20 Minutes
20 Minutes is a free news publisher which also publishes a daily newspaper. Launched in Paris in 2002, it was originally aimed at French commuters, and has grown to become one of France's leading news organizations, read by more than 20 million monthly users. With a focus on digital platforms, including its website and mobile app, 20 Minutes delivers up-to-the-minute news updates, insightful analysis, and engaging multimedia content.
The Challenge
20 Minutes migrated from on-premise infrastructure to serverless architecture on AWS and Google Cloud to handle traffic spikes during major news events. However, the unpredictable costs of serverless architecture made budgeting difficult, especially with spiking traffic from mobile app usage.
The Solution
20 Minutes implemented DoiT Console for real-time cloud cost visualization across AWS and Google Cloud, Real-Time Anomaly Detection for cost spike alerts, and Flexsave for Compute for automatic discount allocation. The team gained daily visibility into Lambda usage, S3 storage costs, and workload expenses.
Results
- Reclaimed capacity equivalent to two full-time engineers for innovation projects
- Achieved 9.2% savings on AWS compute workloads with Flexsave for Compute
- Saved hundreds of dollars by quickly detecting and fixing Step Functions cost spike
- Reduced Step Functions costs by 90% through rapid anomaly detection and remediation
Like most media companies, we need to be careful about our expenditure, and with spiking traffic on a busy news day, our costs can quickly rise. The DoiT console helps us see all our costs in detail, understand where they're coming from, and take steps to control them.
Jérémy Benoist, VP Engineering at 20 Minutes
Visualizing and managing cloud expenditure with DoiT technology
With DoiT console, the 20 Minutes team can now see exactly what cloud resources it is using and their cost in real time, both for its serverless infrastructure on AWS and for its data analytics workloads running on Google Cloud. The team checks costs daily, with the CTO reviewing expenditure each morning to understand spending and make adjustments. The console allows them to optimize caching policies by seeing the immediate impact of changes on costs, and use forecasting to predict costs and scenario-plan for news-driven traffic spikes.
Spotting spiking costs quickly with Real-Time Anomaly Detection
20 Minutes uses Real-Time Anomaly Detection to spot unexpected spikes in cloud costs, reducing false positives and enabling rapid remediation. When a bug in Step Functions configuration led to spiking costs, the team immediately received an alert and fixed the issue quickly. They spotted costs rising from $2 to $20 per day and reduced them by 90%, saving hundreds of dollars. The company also uses Flexsave for Compute to automatically allocate discounted rates to AWS compute workloads.
Freeing up developers to develop new services
20 Minutes saves significant time with DoiT technology. Without full visibility of cloud usage, the company previously spent weeks diagnosing and fixing cost issues. With DoiT console, they can identify problems quickly and save development time. These time savings allow the team to dedicate resources to valuable projects, including developing a new generative AI tool to help journalists reformat news stories, allowing journalists to focus on creating original content.
Access to cloud expertise on demand
20 Minutes maintains regular contact with the DoiT team through direct messaging and monthly check-ins. When they need support, the team turns to DoiT Cloud Solve and Cloud Reliability Engineers who react quickly with precise analysis and solutions. The CREs help fix issues in a matter of days, providing essential cloud expertise on demand.
See how DoiT helps cloud teams control spend
Explore how DoiT Cloud Intelligence helps teams improve visibility, governance, and unit economics across cloud environments.
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What they say
What I really like about DoiT's approach is that you're very hands-on and proactive. Satyam would ping me a few times a sprint, letting me know about the most current features, checking in on how things are going. When we are going through a peak time, that proactiveness makes a real difference. Satyam always comes through whenever we need support and helps us leverage the right experts to get us where we need to be.
Chiamaka Ibeme, Engineering Manager, Platform
SELECT has made important cost data readily accessible. I will often pull it up during engineering design reviews so we can quickly evaluate cost impact and projections and factor that into our design decisions.
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I love clicking through SELECT to understand how our environment and workloads are evolving. I probably check it every day. It's coffee and SELECT for me every morning.
Ian Fahey, Senior Analytics Engineer at Loop
You guys have the best UI experience that I've had of any software. It's like you just read my mind where, like, oh, I wish I could click there. Oh, I can
Diana Koshy, Sr. Director of Data Engineering at Kargo
SELECT feels like exactly what Paul and I would have built if we had locked ourselves in a room for 18 months to create our ideal monitoring solution.
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SELECT dramatically lowers the cognitive load to understanding Snowflake costs. I'm able to sit there and easily understand what's driving the cost. Not to blow smoke up your ass, but it's just so easy to do in your platform
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