Well-Architected Review: Cut Cloud Costs & Boost Efficiency

The cloud has become the backbone of modern business, powering growth, agility, and innovation. But for many mid-market and enterprise organisations, it also comes with hidden risks and unnecessary costs.

On average, 35% of cloud spend is wasted on over provisioned services, forgotten workloads, and unused licences. For companies spending big on cloud and SaaS, that can amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds slipping away every year.

A Well-Architected Review (WAR) is designed to change that.

Benchmarking your cloud environment against the six WAR pillars of best practice can expose inefficiencies, strengthen resilience, and create a roadmap for improvement. Done right, it doesn’t just cut costs, it builds a cloud foundation that’s efficient, secure, and ready to support long-term business goals.

At Libra Advisory, we deliver Well-Architected Reviews differently. 

We focus on cost optimisation first, uncovering “trapped cash” quickly so you can reinvest savings into the projects that matter most. And we do it for free. 

A Well-Architected Review isn’t just a checkbox. Let’s look at what happens during one of these, and how it can help you save. 

A Well-Architected Review (WAR) is a structured assessment of your cloud environment, measured against six proven pillars. Think of it as a health check for your cloud. It highlights what’s working, pinpoints inefficiencies, and delivers an improvement plan.

The Six Pillars of a Well-Architected Review

At the heart of every Well-Architected Review are six guiding pillars: 

1. Operational Excellence 
2. Security
3. Reliability
4. Performance Efficiency 
5. Cost Optimisation
6. Sustainability

These are practical lenses through which your cloud environment is evaluated to ensure it is resilient, efficient, secure, and delivering maximum business value. By benchmarking against these pillars, organisations gain a structured, 360° view of their cloud estate. 

Each pillar highlights different risks and opportunities, from preventing costly downtime to uncovering hidden waste and advancing ESG goals. Together, they provide a comprehensive framework for turning the cloud from a cost centre into a driver of growth and transformation.

At Libra Advisory, we focus on the Cost Optimisation Review the cost optimisation pillar of the WAR first - and for free - as this is often where the biggest savings lie. Many firms keep servers running “just in case” or pay for SaaS licences long after staff have left. Tackling the Cost Optimisation pillar via a review (COR) uncovers this trapped cash fast, freeing budget for innovation or strategic projects.

For most organisations, Cost Optimisation is where the fastest, most tangible value of a Well-Architected Review is realised. 

And a good Cost Optimisation Review (COR) is about far more than a technical clean-up; it’s a structured FinOps discipline, embedded into the way your business uses cloud and designed to make costs fully visible, manageable, and strategically aligned.

As part of Libra Advisory’s free COR, we’ll systematically get to know your organisation and your FinOps spend through an Analysis and Service Review that involves minimal input from subject matter experts and product owners.

Our basic process is as follows:

1. Service Review: Together, we define two to three priority services for review and complete a short questionnaire on function and resources.
2. Cost Review: We’ll run a structured workshop with your technical experts to uncover where costs can be optimised.
3. Account and Measurement: We then provide estimated savings for each identified win, indicating strategies like storage lifecycle policies or rightsizing.
4. Project Breakdown: We’ll convert savings into small, deliverable projects (typically under two weeks).
5. Client Review and Acceptance: If you’d like to go ahead with these projects, we will then move into approval, scheduling, and reporting discussions.

1. Immediate wins and long-term improvements

Our Free Cost Optimisation Review gives IT leaders a snapshot of improvements they can start to make to better control the costs of their environment in the long term. 

2. Prioritises actions against impact 

We use the COR within our consultancy process to identify high cost resources, that make big impacts on OpEx, presenting clear tangible savings to decision makers. 

Moreover, we take special care to avoid unnecessary load on your engineers by presenting them with easy-to-perform changes backed with clear evidence.

3. Support Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments

Environmental impact is close to our heart, and our Cost Reductions methods, lead to real tangible differences in both Scope 2 and Scope 3 carbon accounting. 

 When ancillary travel services provider Holiday Extras came to Libra Advisory looking for support in optimising their costs to support growth and acquisition plans, we knew we could help them save big.

We worked with senior stakeholders across the business to conduct a Cost-Optimisation Review and quickly identified a number of ways to help them save over £200k per annum. 

By removing zombie resources, implementing saving plans, optimising query and lookup tasks and removing or reallocating unused licenses, we were able to optimise their Google cloud computing services, freeing up extra budget for exciting growth plans.

Unlock hidden savings and strengthen your cloud infrastructure with Libra Advisory’s independent Cost Optimisation Review today. 

Backed by 70+ years of expertise across IT, procurement, cloud, and FinOps, we go deeper than surface checks to deliver immediate savings and long-term improvements.