Meet Starchive
Starchive is a digital asset management platform designed for today's creators. Its mission is to make it easy for creators to access, use, and build on their work. With over a decade of experience, including archiving Bob Dylan's catalog, Starchive offers a system that mirrors an artist's mind, allowing for seamless storage and organization of digital assets. Key features include advanced search, access control, version control, and Web3 integration, making it a crucial tool for commercial, cultural, and community creators.
The Challenge
As Starchive's user base grew, cloud spend increased urgently, requiring better linkage to value and unit economics. Cloud costs escalated quickly, outpacing existing budgeting guardrails. The introduction of AI-assisted functionalities and image recognition capabilities compounded this surge. Without clear strategy to track and manage costs, Starchive faced significant operational inefficiencies due to missing allocations, guardrails, and near real-time visibility.
The Solution
DoiT conducted a thorough governed optimization review of Starchive's AWS workload across account, resource type, and cost categories. Leveraging Amazon CloudWatch and AWS Compute Optimizer data, DoiT identified opportunities to downsize and de-provision underutilized resources. DoiT implemented Flexsave for Compute and introduced a comprehensive tagging strategy to enable allocations-grade reporting and unit economics. The team updated Infrastructure as Code to include tags for dynamically created resources and enforced tag policies at the organizational level.
Results
- Achieved 32% annual savings on cloud spend through cost optimization and Flexsave for Compute
- Gained ability to model business margins accurately with insights into cost of production and service delivery
- Improved budgeting and strategic planning with better resource allocation and investment capabilities
- Strengthened confidence to scale AI features on AWS with comprehensive cost tracking and visibility
DoiT's expertise in AWS cost optimization has been a game-changer for us. With their help, we saved 32% annually and gained critical insights into our cost structure. Working with DoiT has significantly improved our budgeting and forecasting capabilities, allowing us to focus more on innovation and growth. The DoiT team has been an absolute joy to work with and I have learned so much from this process!
Peter Agelasto, Cofounder and CTO, Starchive
Implementation Details
The new tagging strategy involved updating Starchive's Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to include tags for dynamically created resources such as AWS Lambda and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) tasks. The teams at DoiT and Starchive manually tagged static resources using AWS Tag Editor, closing gaps for complete coverage. Finally, Starchive enforced tag policies at the organizational level, ensuring consistent usage across the board and preventing untagged spend from reaching production. This strategy allowed Starchive to conduct detailed cost analyses, enabling it to derive critical Unit Economics metrics.
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