Case Study
Augury runs Kubernetes & AI production workloads on Spot VMs and saves 80%
With Flexera Ocean, Augury cut costs while maintaining high availability for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and AI workloads running on Azure Spot VMs.
At a glance
Industry: Technology
Location: New York, NY
Product: Flexera Ocean
Augury, a leader in machine health and process health solutions, uses purpose-built AI technology, trained by industry experts and the world’s largest data library, to help manufacturing and industrial companies eliminate production downtime, improve process efficiency, maximize yield and reduce waste and emissions.
Introduction
Transforming industrial intelligence through cloud innovation
Augury strategically adopted cloud infrastructure with container architecture; they chose Microsoft Azure as their primary cloud provider and leverage Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). This move positioned them at the forefront of cloud innovation, ensuring continued operational efficiency and scalability.
The challenge
Navigating complexity and streamlining VM management
Augury’s AKS workloads were spread across three Azure accounts: development and AI, staging, and production. The staging and production environments each had a single cluster with several thousand pods, while the development and AI account maintained four clusters, with two dedicated to AI workloads.
Initially, Augury’s DevOps team handled this complex infrastructure internally. However, facing the need to reduce operational complexity, streamline cloud costs, and improve gross margins, Guy Carmy, Augury’s DevOps lead, sought an optimization solution for their AKS infrastructure. “The need to cut our cloud costs became more pressing over the years,” said Carmy.
Prior to onboarding Ocean, Augury had been using Azure Spot Virtual Machines (VMs) via Terraform. However, Azure’s autoscaler proved too rigid, limiting node pools to a single virtual machine (VM) size, and yielding minimal cost savings.
“We needed a more comprehensive way to manage VMs—one that could account for machine pricing and availability while delivering a more aggressive downscaling where possible.”
Guy Carmy DevOps Lead, Augury
Standards for partnership
Meeting the rigorous standards for partnership
Flexera Ocean emerged as the ideal choice for Augury, but first, Ocean was rigorously evaluated to meet Augury’s criteria for third-party solutions:
- Tangible and measurable value: Ocean’s ability to automatically optimize cloud usage and report cost savings cost aligned perfectly with Augury’s goals
- Integration with existing workflows: Augury values smooth integration with their existing tooling, including Terraform and Helm charts. Ocean’s compatibility with these tools ensured a smooth transition for Augury’s DevOps team.
- Compliance with CISO-defined security standards: Augury prioritizes data security and requires any solution, including Ocean, to adhere to their CISO-defined security standards.
- Adherence to corporate procurement guidelines: Augury insists on partnering with reputable enterprise-grade vendors. Ocean’s established reputation made it an ideal choice.
Ocean’s enterprise-grade SaaS offering easily met these requirements, securing its position as Augury’s preferred solution.
“If you’re grappling with high AKS costs, there are two key steps to take. First, consider vertical scaling or rightsizing. This will make sure that your app only requires what it really needs. It’s a tough mission at scale, so I’m really looking forward to Ocean’s release of automatic rightsizing. And second, you want to onboard a cost aware cluster autoscaler from the smarter range. Out of those, Ocean is the best possible choice we found for AKS.”
Guy Carmy DevOps Lead, Augury
The solution
Choosing Flexera Ocean
Following a successful Proof of Concept (POC), Augury migrated their staging and their development and AI environments to Virtual Node Groups (VNGs) managed by Ocean. Subsequently, production clusters were also migrated, achieving nearly 100% Spot VM coverage.
Ocean's intelligent automation dynamically scales infrastructure based on real-time analysis and workload demands of AKS clusters, continuously optimizing performance, efficiency, and cost.
With Ocean, Augury achieved significant cost savings and simplified their AKS infrastructure through key features:
Bin packing: Condensing workloads onto fewer, more utilized nodes reduced complexity and improved Augury’s cost efficiency
Rightsizing: Following Ocean’s recommendations, node sizes were adjusted to actual workload demands, allowing Augury to operate more efficiently on smaller, cost-effective nodes
Heterogenous VNGs: Ocean’s ability to support diverse machine types within a single node pool minimized the number of pools Augury needed to manage
“We quickly migrated our production to Ocean-run spot VMs. Ocean handles them efficiently, ensuring our production availability remains unaffected.”
Guy Carmy DevOps Lead, Augury
Azure spot VMs
Using Azure spot VMs in production with Ocean
Following a successful Proof of Concept (POC), Augury migrated their dev, AI and staging environments to Virtual Node Groups (VNGs) managed by Ocean. Subsequently, production clusters were also migrated, achieving nearly 100% spot VM coverage—an impactful cost-saving measure.
“We quickly migrated our production to Ocean-run spot VMs,” said Carmy. “Ocean handles them efficiently, ensuring our production availability remains unaffected.”
Ocean’s reliability has enabled Augury to optimize its internal developer platform. All environments autonomously spun up by Augury’s developers are now hosted on Ocean-managed AKS clusters, benefiting from efficient computing and resource-effective autoscaling.
The results
Revolutionizing Augury’s cloud cost management strategy
Over a 12-month period, Augury saved a staggering 80% compared to equivalent on-demand costs. Further, Ocean’s reliability has enabled Augury to optimize its internal developer platform. All environments autonomously spun up by Augury’s developers are now hosted on Ocean-managed AKS clusters, benefiting from efficient computing and resource-effective autoscaling.
“Ocean’s VNG flexibility delivered near-instant cost and time savings,” said Carmy. “We drastically simplified our AKS infrastructure—from requiring unique Azure node pools for each workload type to consolidating multiple workloads with varying needs to run on the same Ocean VNG. Thanks to Ocean’s VNGs accommodating heterogeneity, managing our infrastructure became a ‘set it and forget it’ process. Upon implementing Ocean, we set up two VNGs that have hosted all our workloads ever since.”
Ocean ensured uninterrupted operations, supported by its seamless integration with AKS that enhanced control over Kubernetes operations. By automating key processes and providing actionable insights, Ocean helped Augury to achieve greater operational efficiency and enabled their DevOps team to prioritize pioneering digital innovations for competitive advantage.
“Thanks to Ocean’s VNGs accommodating heterogeneity, managing our infrastructure became a ‘set it and forget it’ process. Upon implementing Ocean, we set up two VNGs that have hosted all our workloads ever since.”
Guy Carmy DevOps Lead, Augury
Business impact
Looking ahead
Augury is interested in the development of Ocean’s automatic rightsizing for AKS, a groundbreaking feature set to transform its cloud management strategy. This unique capability will facilitate continuous rightsizing in the background through automation policies, ensuring optimal resource allocation without manual intervention. [Note: Ocean automatic rightsizing was released in June 2025.]
“It would be deeply disappointing if we lost Ocean. It plays a crucial role in cost management without compromising performance or scalability. Without it, optimizing costs would be a lot more challenging, and the results might not measure.”
Guy Carmy DevOps Lead, Augury
Next steps