Axify is a SaaS engineering analytics platform developed by Nexapp, a Quebec-based software development company. Built for software teams that want better visibility into delivery, performance and engineering operations, Axify connects to tools, such as Jira, to process development data and turn it into actionable insights.

As the product matured, its AWS environment grew with it. New services were added. Experiments were launched. Migrations left traces behind. Some infrastructure decisions still supported the platform. Others belonged to an earlier stage of the product.

Over time, the question became harder to ignore: was Axify’s AWS environment costing more than it should?

For Alexandre Walsh, Nexapp Co-Founder and Axify CTO, the issue was more than technical. Infrastructure costs felt too high for the level of resiliency the environment was delivering, raising questions about whether the complexity of the technology stack was truly justified. At the same time, those costs were affecting product margins, pricing discussions and the team’s ability to scale with confidence.

The goal became clear: simplify the technology stack, reduce unnecessary AWS services and resources, and build a leaner, more resilient environment. Getting there, however, required a level of cost visibility and analysis that the engineering team did not always have time to undertake.

Before working with Unicorne, Axify mainly used AWS Cost Explorer to understand its cloud spending. The tool provided useful information, but it did not give the team a prioritized path to action. The data was there. The challenge was knowing what mattered, what could wait and what would actually move the needle.

Axify needed a more practical way to:

• Identify unused or underused AWS resources
• Prioritize the most valuable cost optimization opportunities
• Act quickly on simple savings
• Evaluate AWS Savings Plans with more confidence
• Spot AWS Extended Support risks before they became expensive
• Reduce waste without pulling developers away from product work
• Build cost awareness into day-to-day infrastructure management

The objective was not to cut AWS costs at any cost. Axify needed to keep building on AWS, but with better visibility, stronger discipline and more confidence that its infrastructure was aligned with the real needs of the product.

Unicorne introduced Axify to Stable , its FinOps platform designed to help AWS customers identify, prioritize and act on cloud cost optimization opportunities.

The onboarding was simple. Axify deployed an AWS CloudFormation stack that allowed Stable to analyze its AWS environment. Within approximately hours, the first recommendations were available.

That speed was critical. Instead of spending weeks digging through AWS cost data, Axify could immediately see where to begin.

Stable first surfaced the kinds of issues that often accumulate quietly in a fast-moving SaaS environment: resources still running with little or no activity, load balancers that were no longer needed, unused Lambda functions, legacy database configurations and services that had been opened for a previous purpose but never cleaned up.

Some of these opportunities were small on their own. But in cloud infrastructure, small recurring costs rarely stay small. A forgotten resource here, an outdated configuration there, a load balancer left running for months: together, they can become a meaningful drain on product margins.

Stable helped Axify turn those hidden costs into visible actions.

The platform also highlighted larger AWS optimization opportunities. One of the most important was AWS Savings Plans. Stable made the potential savings easier to understand, giving the team more confidence to evaluate commitment-based cost reductions.

Storage was another major area of impact. By identifying opportunities to reduce unnecessary or inefficient storage usage, Stable helped Axify achieve a 65% reduction in Amazon S3 storage, VPN, Networks, Database and unused resources.

Across the environment, Stable monitored 350,000 AWS resources, giving Axify a much broader view of its cloud footprint. The solution covered several key AWS areas, including Amazon RDS, Amazon ECS, AWS Lambda, Amazon S3 and Elastic Load Balancing. It also flagged AWS Extended Support risks tied to older database versions, allowing Axify to plan updates before those configurations became more expensive to maintain.

For the Axify team, Stable’s value was that it translated cost signals into engineering decisions.

Some recommendations could be handled immediately. Others became part of a longer-term infrastructure roadmap. The team could separate quick wins from deeper modernization work and avoid wasting time on low-impact analysis.

Unicorne also helped establish trust from the start. Before deploying Stable, Axify wanted to confirm that the CloudFormation stack would not create production risk or introduce excessive permissions. Once that trust was in place, the implementation moved quickly.

After setup, Axify was able to work with a high level of autonomy. Stable continued monitoring the environment in the background, while the team reviewed recommendations and brought the right actions into its internal workflows.

For an engineering team without a dedicated DevOps or FinOps specialist, that made the difference. Stable gave Axify continuous AWS cost awareness without requiring a full-time person to chase cloud spending.

The results came quickly. In less than one month, Axify reduced its AWS bill by 23%, representing thousands of dollars in savings.

The savings came from a mix of quick cleanup actions, AWS commitment opportunities, storage optimization and proactive recommendations around infrastructure configurations. More importantly, Axify gained a repeatable way to keep cloud costs under control as the product continued to evolve.

The project delivered measurable results:

• 23% savings on the AWS bill in less than one month
• 350,000 AWS resources monitored through Stable
• 65% reduction in Amazon S3 storage, VPN, Networks, Database and unused resources
• Thousands of dollars saved through AWS cost optimization
• Unused and underused AWS resources identified quickly
• AWS Savings Plans opportunities made easier to evaluate
• AWS Extended Support risks flagged before they became larger costs
• Less engineering time spent manually investigating AWS cost drivers

For Axify, the first month proved the financial value. The longer-term value was the change in operating rhythm.

Stable also reduced the pressure on the engineering team. Instead of repeatedly asking why the infrastructure cost what it did, Axify could point to concrete answers. The team had a clearer view of which services were being used properly, which resources were no longer needed and which optimization projects should be prioritized.

With Unicorne and Stable, Axify now has more than a one-time AWS cleanup. It has a continuous FinOps practice that helps protect margins, guide technical decisions and support product growth.