Shiftmove's path to
predictable AWS spend

The challenge

At Shiftmove, unpredictable AWS bills weren't just a finance problem — they were a strategic one. The company's fleet management platform runs across a complex mix of production services, internal tooling, and data infrastructure, distributed across 36 AWS accounts. As the product scaled, spend scaled with it. But the relationship between growth and cost was opaque.

Finance was working from lagging data. Cloud bills arrived at the end of the month, making it difficult to defend projections to investors or connect spend to revenue with any precision. Meanwhile, engineering was spending meaningful time responding to cost escalations rather than shipping product.

Four key accounts drove the majority of spend, but Shiftmove's governance model added complexity. Their requirements were non-negotiable:

• IAM roles provisioned and managed via Terraform
• Service Control Policies (SCPs) applied across the organization
• No changes to account structure, tagging, or workload configuration

Any solution had to bring predictability without disrupting the workflows that kept the business secure and stable.

Business impact

Within weeks of working with Cloud Capital, Shiftmove reframed AWS spend from a volatile cost line into a governed financial driver — one with predictable margins and a clear relationship to revenue.

The 27.3% guaranteed savings rate flows directly to the bottom line. Engineering's time spent on cost management dropped by more than 80%, freeing the team to focus on the roadmap. Finance and engineering tension — the kind that builds up when cloud bills are hard to explain — largely disappeared.

At the commitment level, risk exposure fell from 100% to 34% while coverage increased from 34% to 75%. Cloud Capital absorbed the utilization risk entirely under the commercial agreement, turning a variable cost into a predictable one without requiring Shiftmove to take any position on future usage.

Inside the model

Cloud Capital integrated directly into Shiftmove's 36-account AWS Organization. IAM roles were provisioned via Terraform to match Shiftmove's existing infrastructure-as-code workflow, with a dedicated account established for Savings Plans and Reserved Instance management. This kept all commitment activity isolated and auditable without touching production infrastructure.

The access model was deliberately minimal: read-only billing access plus a scoped purchase role. No re-tagging, no account restructuring, no SCP changes, no workload modifications. Shiftmove's compliance posture remained intact throughout.

Cloud Capital then built a laddered commitment strategy across Savings Plans and Reserved Instances, calibrated against Shiftmove's historical usage patterns and growth trajectory. Monthly proposals are reviewed via AWS Billing Conductor, giving finance a clear view of what's being committed and why. As new accounts are added, they inherit coverage automatically.