Azure Infrastructure Consulting to Drive 20% Cloud Cost Savings for a Luxury Travel Agency

Summary

A luxury travel agency runs an Azure-based online platform where travelers discover, compare, and book luxury holidays. As part of a regular technology-review cycle, it set out to strengthen its backup and recovery approach and optimize Azure infrastructure spend. INNERLUXES assessed the environment and delivered a data-driven report with backup, cost-optimization, governance, and security recommendations — outlining a path to over 20% annual Azure savings while maintaining performance.

About the Client

The Client is a luxury travel agency offering boutique holiday accommodations and experiences across the Mediterranean, running an Azure-based platform for its high-end travel bookings.

The Challenge

To keep its platform reliable and competitive, the Client regularly reviews its technology stack and launches engineering initiatives to improve performance and user experience. As part of this cycle, the Client set out to strengthen its backup and recovery approach and optimize Azure infrastructure spend, and turned to INNERLUXES for its Azure expertise.

The Solution

The Client granted INNERLUXES read-only access via an Azure AD role, and INNERLUXES compiled an inventory of more than 170 Azure resources across the environment. Using Azure Monitor, the team collected performance metrics across key services — App Services, Storage Accounts, App Service Plans, Virtual Machines (VMs), and an Azure SQL Managed Instance. Based on this telemetry and the inventory, INNERLUXES identified common optimization and governance gaps, including overprovisioned workloads, inconsistent or missing tagging, and overly broad network access controls.

To support the Client's goal of verifying backup availability and defining suitable protection options, INNERLUXES recommended the following backup measures:

• VM-level protection using Azure Backup, covering operating systems, data disks, and configurations with defined schedules and retention policies.
• Automated backups for Azure App Services, with flexible scheduling and retention options.
• Protection of Azure file shares through Azure Backup or snapshots to support point-in-time recovery.
• Workload-aware protection for databases hosted on VMs, using Azure Backup and native mechanisms such as SQL Server backups to Azure storage.
• Built-in automated backups for Azure SQL Managed Instance, with configurable and long-term retention options where required.

Next, INNERLUXES prepared an Azure cost-optimization analysis with usage-aware recommendations and estimated savings — replacing overprovisioned resources with more appropriate VM sizes based on actual CPU and memory utilization. To avoid compromising reliability, the team distinguished dynamic workloads that could safely move to flexible Azure Savings Plans from stable, performance-sensitive components requiring reserved capacity for VMs and App Service Plans. Together, right-sizing, Savings Plans, and reserved instances represented annual savings potential of over 20% of the Client's current Azure spend. INNERLUXES also recommended optimizing database backup patterns (e.g., replacing daily full backups with differential or incremental backups) to reduce storage and processing costs without affecting recovery point objectives (RPO).

For governance, INNERLUXES recommended consistent resource tagging and grouping to make cost tracking and reporting more transparent. For security, it reviewed Network Security Group (NSG) configurations and recommended tightening inbound rules, limiting access to management ports, and funneling external traffic through Azure Front Door or Application Gateway to reduce exposure to misconfiguration risks.

At the end of the engagement, INNERLUXES delivered the full resource inventory, supporting performance metrics, and a consolidated report with practical recommendations for backup implementation, cost optimization, and improved governance and security.

The Results

• The Client gained a clear, evidence-based roadmap to improve resilience, governance, security, and cost efficiency.
• INNERLUXES delivered a data-rich infrastructure review report with a full resource inventory, performance and cost analysis, and practical backup and recovery recommendations across key workloads.
• The proposed optimization measures outlined a path to over 20% annual Azure savings potential while maintaining performance and RPO.

Technologies and Tools

Azure Monitor, Azure Application Insights, Azure Resource Manager, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Network Watcher, Azure Reservations, Azure Savings Plans, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Network Security Group.