Onedot Cuts AWS Costs by 20% While Scaling Its Ecommerce AI Platform with DoiT
Meet Onedot
One-third of the world’s population now shops online, accounting for more than 20% of global retail sales annually. For every one of those billions of physical products sold, a corresponding set of product data is required to accurately describe it in a digital storefront or marketplace so shoppers can find what they’re looking for.
The challenge is that every supplier structures and describes product data differently. Managing this vast and inconsistent data landscape can be a major operational burden for retailers, draining resources and resulting in poorly classified or hard-to-find products.
That’s why many leading international retailers turn to Onedot. Its AI-powered platform automates the sourcing, onboarding, enrichment, and syndication of product data at scale. More than 500 million products have already been processed by Onedot’s AI, helping retailers improve product discoverability, enhance the customer experience, and significantly reduce operational overhead.
The Challenge
With a modern cloud architecture hosted on AWS, Onedot uses Apache Spark on Amazon EMR as its core data processing engine. To handle large data volumes, the company needed automatic, elastic scaling to maximize compute efficiency and optimize cloud spend—without allowing costs to grow unpredictably.
“We were having some issues with cost management across our AWS workloads. We turned to DoiT for help with resource planning and architectural guidance so we could get the most from our data processing on AWS while keeping our cloud bill under control.”
— Tobias Widmer, Founder and CTO of Onedot
The Solution
Onedot began working with DoiT in the spring of 2023 by outlining its existing architecture and operational challenges.
DoiT implemented a two-pronged engagement approach. First, the team conducted an AWS Well-Architected Review to identify opportunities to better align Onedot’s workloads and architecture with AWS best practices.
The second focus area centered on optimizing resource usage to reduce cloud costs. These optimization efforts targeted three key areas:
Automating AWS instance capacity with Flexsave for Compute
Onedot’s first step toward optimizing cloud spend was implementing Flexsave for Compute, automating the management of AWS Savings Plans coverage to continuously maximize commitment-based discounts. This enables Onedot to scale workloads up or down without unexpected bill spikes and without manually adjusting commitments.
Continuous infrastructure refinement
Onedot began using the DoiT Console to gain deeper visibility into AWS cloud usage. Working alongside DoiT consultants, the team implemented automated alerts to detect unusual usage patterns likely to increase costs.
With these insights, Widmer and his team collaborated with DoiT to analyze spending patterns and refine AWS infrastructure design to improve cost efficiency.
Getting the big architectural decisions right
A major strategic discussion centered on Onedot’s use of Apache Spark on Amazon EMR. The team evaluated whether migrating to a self-managed Kubernetes cluster—or running Spark on Kubernetes—could reduce cloud expenditure.
In collaboration with DoiT, Onedot conducted an in-depth cost comparison of various architectural approaches. Ultimately, the team determined that using Amazon EKS, AWS’s managed Kubernetes service, would be more cost-effective than continuing with EMR or managing a self-hosted Kubernetes cluster.
“Balancing costs versus savings and weighing the pros and cons of different infrastructure options is exactly where DoiT supports us. We’re not beginners with AWS, so we challenge DoiT with complex requirements, and they help us develop advanced architectural solutions.”
— Tobias Widmer, Founder and CTO of Onedot
The Results
Reducing AWS cloud expenditure by more than 20%
Within the first three months of engagement, Onedot began realizing measurable impact. Through Flexsave for Compute and architectural rebalancing, the company reduced its AWS cloud expenditure by more than 20%.
Scaling with a leaner, more efficient operation
Onedot continues working with DoiT to strengthen its security posture in preparation for international ISMS certifications. At the same time, both teams are refining the architecture to improve efficiency, performance, and platform stability.
These improvements enable Onedot to process and deliver product data faster and more reliably—while operating with a leaner and more cost-efficient cloud infrastructure.
What's Next?
“As we continue working with DoiT, they help us stay fit and lean—ensuring that as our company grows, our cloud costs don’t increase at the same rate. As our partner, we know DoiT will help us keep finding the right path forward, choosing the best options to scale our business and deliver the product data our customers depend on.”
— Tobias Widmer, Founder and CTO of Onedot