📌 Case Study · FX & Multi-Asset Brokerage · AWS Managed Service

Cutting Cloud Costs for FX-Grade Infra

How we saved $46,800/year for a regulated FX brokerage — without compromising a single trade.

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$28,300 → $24,400 13.8% Cost Reduction ~$46,800 Saved Per Year

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ABOUT THE CLIENT

Sigma Trading Management (STM) is an ASIC-regulated B2B financial infrastructure provider serving Brokers, Market Makers, Exchanges, and Multi-asset Platforms across FX and multi-asset classes.

Their AWS environment powers MT4/MT5 trading platforms, a proprietary real-time risk management system, and compliance reporting pipelines — all requiring 24/7 uptime with zero tolerance for latency or downtime.

THE CHALLENGE

🔴 Aurora over-provisioned beyond actual workload needs — persistent overspend with no performance justification.

🔴 EKS running 100% On-Demand with no Spot utilisation — paying peak-hour pricing around the clock, every day of the week.

🔴 Years of trade data sitting in standard S3 storage — no lifecycle tiering, no automated archiving, no reason for the cost.

🔴 Manual deployments with zero cost attribution — no tagging strategy, no visibility, no monthly reporting baseline.

WHAT WE DID

① RDS / Aurora Right-Sizing

Deep workload analysis revealed significant over-provisioning across STM’s Aurora clusters. We migrated to a right-sized RDS configuration matched to actual query load and throughput — and eliminated unnecessary Extended Support charges that were quietly compounding the monthly bill.

② EKS Spot Integration & HPA Tuning

Spot Instances were introduced to replace a portion of On-Demand container compute. The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler was re-tuned to reflect real usage patterns — scaling capacity up during active trading windows and reducing it during off-hours, turning predictable idle time into tangible savings.

③ S3 Lifecycle Policies

Automated lifecycle rules now transition data older than 180 days to low-cost archive storage tiers. Trade records, compliance logs, and historical reports now cost a fraction of what standard S3 storage was charging — with no manual intervention required.

④ IaC Automation & Tagging Strategy

All manual deployment processes were migrated to Infrastructure as Code, enforcing consistency and repeatability. A unified tagging schema was applied across every AWS resource — enabling granular cost attribution by service and function, and providing the audit trail required under ASIC regulatory obligations.

RESULTS

Metric	Result
Monthly AWS bill before	$28,300
Monthly AWS bill after	$24,400
Monthly savings	~$3,900 (13.8%)
Annualised savings	~$46,800
Deployment speed	Significantly improved via IaC
Cost visibility	Full monthly dashboard + resource tagging

WHY FX Infrastructure Is Different

FX platforms follow a clear and predictable weekly rhythm — concentrated load during London and New York session overlap, near-idle during weekends and Asian off-hours.

Most cloud configurations ignore this entirely. They provision for peak capacity and charge for it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of whether the markets are open.

By aligning autoscaling to the actual trading calendar, STM’s infrastructure now scales with real demand rather than theoretical maximums. This single optimisation was one of the highest-ROI changes in the entire engagement.

As an ASIC-regulated wholesale financial services provider, STM also operates under strict requirements for system stability and auditability. The IaC migration and Tagging Strategy didn’t just cut costs — they simultaneously strengthened the governance framework and compliance posture required under AFSL obligations.

❝ For FX infrastructure, the cost problem and the compliance problem are often the same problem — lack of visibility. Solving one means solving both. ❞

READY TO OPTIMISE YOUR TRADING INFRASTRUCTURE?

If you’re running trading infrastructure on AWS and your bill doesn’t reflect your actual market hours — there’s very likely money on the table.

Get in touch for a free AWS cost assessment!

→ Direct Contact: hello@jedihilltaas.com.au