We explore the importance of aligning technical decisions with business requirements through a story about a customer that ultimately reduced storage costs by 40% by doing so.

The customer builds an imaging solution for optometrists. Initially, the customer opted to use Google Cloud Persistent Disks due to its speed, growing capacity, and backup capabilities. The goal was to enable optometrists to quickly retrieve patient images, ideally reducing retrieval time from three seconds to one second.

However, the choice of Persistent Disk led to unintended consequences. The company amassed petabytes of images on PD, substantially increasing their storage costs without corresponding benefits to their business needs.

Think for a moment about the average visit to an optometrist. Patients may get their eyes imaged, and these images are uploaded to the cloud storage for future reference. The retrieval speed between two seconds and ten seconds typically doesn’t make a significant difference in patient satisfaction or clinical outcomes. More often than not, these images are never accessed again once stored, except for compliance reasons.

The reality is that opting for the fastest and most robust storage solution—Persistent Disk—resulted in immense costs primarily because a considerable portion of the stored data was rarely, if ever, accessed. What could have been a straightforward solution turned into a significant expense due to a mismatch between technology and business needs.

By questioning the necessity of such speed and this storage type—simply asking “Do you really need this fast?”—it became clear that storing these rarely accessed images on Persistent Disk was not necessary.

The customer decided to transition their storage to Google Cloud’s auto-class storage, which automatically moves infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage tiers, ultimately leading to a 40% reduction in storage costs when it was all said and done.

This clip comes from Episode 18 of Cloud Masters, where three Technical Account Managers at DoiT shared some cloud management strategy tips with us, using real customer experiences to highlight why they can be so impactful.

📺 Watch the full episode: Full Episode