Leading Gaming Operator Achieves 42% AWS Cost Reduction with CONVX Managed Services

A prominent multi-state gaming and entertainment company operating casinos and online gaming platforms across Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, and Colorado. With both physical locations and digital presence, they serve hundreds of thousands of patrons annually through their brick-and-mortar facilities and growing online betting platforms.

The client faced a perfect storm of cloud management challenges when multiple key technical staff departed in rapid succession, leaving behind:

• An undocumented AWS environment with over 30 EC2 instances and 70+ S3 buckets
• Unclear boundaries between production and development systems
• Unknown security posture and potential compliance issues
• Rapidly increasing and unpredictable cloud costs
• Critical business services running without proper monitoring or backup processes
• Limited internal technical knowledge to manage the environment

The situation was particularly concerning given the highly regulated nature of the gaming industry, where security breaches or compliance failures could result in substantial fines or loss of gaming licenses.

Through a partnership with a trusted IT solutions provider, CONVX was engaged to provide comprehensive AWS managed services and cloud engineering expertise under a three-year agreement. The solution included:

Phase 1: Environment Assessment and Stabilization

• Complete AWS account inventory and architecture documentation
• Identification of critical business services and dependencies
• Implementation of security monitoring and immediate remediation of high-risk vulnerabilities
• Establishment of proper backup protocols for critical data and systems
• AWS Cost Explorer analysis to identify immediate cost-saving opportunities

Phase 2: Security and Compliance Enhancement

• Implementation of AWS security best practices including IAM role refinement
• Deployment of CloudTrail and Security Hub for continuous security monitoring
• Configuration of AWS Config for compliance monitoring and automated remediation
• Implementation of proper network security controls using security groups and NACLs
• Development of disaster recovery capabilities for critical systems

Phase 3: Optimization and Rationalization

• Systematic review of all AWS resources to determine business value
• Decommissioning of redundant or unnecessary services
• Right-sizing of over-provisioned EC2 instances
• Refactoring of applications to leverage appropriate AWS services
• Implementation of Reserved Instances and Savings Plans to reduce costs
• Migration from traditional EC2 deployments to containerized applications using ECS

Managed Services Support

• 24/7 monitoring and incident response for the entire AWS environment
• Regular security scanning and vulnerability management
• Proactive cost optimization recommendations
• 80 hours of monthly development support for cloud infrastructure improvements
• Weekly review meetings and monthly detailed reporting on environment health and performance

• Amazon EC2, RDS, S3, VPC, and Route 53 for core infrastructure
• AWS CloudWatch and SNS for monitoring and alerting
• AWS CloudTrail, GuardDuty, and Security Hub for security monitoring
• AWS Config for compliance management
• AWS Backup for automated backup processes
• Docker containers and Amazon ECS for application deployments
• Terraform for infrastructure as code
• Integration with Okta for identity management
• Data pipeline integration with Snowflake for analytics

After 18 months of partnership with CONVX, the client achieved:

• 42% reduction in monthly AWS costs despite additional investments in security and compliance tools
• Successful third-party security audit with zero critical findings
• Documented and fully monitored cloud environment with clearly defined production and development boundaries
• Improved application performance through infrastructure optimization and modernization
• Rapid incident response with average resolution times under 2 hours for critical issues
• Streamlined development workflow using infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines
• Enhanced business continuity with proper backup and disaster recovery capabilities

The client's IT leadership can now focus on strategic initiatives rather than day-to-day cloud management challenges, with complete confidence in the security, reliability, and cost-efficiency of their AWS environment.

The client selected CONVX based on our:

1. Multi-disciplinary expertise spanning cloud infrastructure, security, DevOps, and data engineering 2. Proven methodology for transforming complex, undocumented environments into well-managed cloud platforms 3. Strategic approach aligning technology decisions with business priorities 4. Automation focus reducing manual effort and improving consistency 5. Mature operational processes ensuring reliable, secure, and efficient ongoing operations

By providing both strategic guidance and hands-on technical implementation, CONVX delivered a comprehensive solution that addressed immediate challenges while building a foundation for future growth and innovation.