This case study outlines how HARMAN implemented FinOps best practices to optimize the cost and improve financial accountability for the eAccreditation platform hosted on AWS. The platform was acquired from Liaison in 2024 and serves as a key service for accreditation, audit, and certification management across educational institutions and agencies in the US.

 

Customer Background – eAccreditation Platform

HARMAN, acquired the eAccreditation platform from Liaison in 2024. eAccreditation is a state-of-the-art, web-based accreditation management system designed for both schools and agencies. The platform has a strong legacy with over 10 years in the field, 12+ active customers, 350+ programs accredited, and more than 1.1 million files managed.

Hosted on AWS, the platform streamlines and documents the end-to-end accreditation process—from self-study to board review. It offers modular customization, making it flexible for various accreditation workflows and administrative needs. Post-acquisition, HARMAN took full responsibility for managing the platform's infrastructure, operations, and cost optimization on AWS.

The key technologies used include HTML, CSS, JQuery for the front end; Perl and Catalyst for the back end; and MSSQL for the database. One of the critical challenges during the transition was implementing effective FinOps practices to control, manage, and optimize the rapidly expanding AWS costs. The goal was to balance cost with performance, scalability, and high availability for the agencies served by the platform.

 

Liaison eAccreditation AWS Architecture Overview

The architecture is built for reliability and cost-efficiency, incorporating FinOps best practices. Key components include:

  • VPC with Multi-AZ Deployment: The system is deployed across three Availability Zones for high availability and fault tolerance.
  • ECS Fargate for Application Containers: Application workloads (apa, caate, acote, appic) are containerized and deployed on AWS Fargate with auto-scaling for optimized resource usage.
  • Application Load Balancer (ALB): Routes traffic intelligently to ECS services across multiple AZs to ensure low-latency and high performance.
  • RDS (MSSQL) in Private Subnets: Database operations are handled through Amazon RDS with active/standby configurations in private subnets, ensuring secure and reliable data storage.
  • NAT Gateways and Public Subnets: Used for outbound internet traffic from private subnets, supporting update and patch operations.
  • Supporting AWS Services: Integration with ECR for container storage, CloudWatch for monitoring, ACM for SSL management, and S3 for static content.
     

This robust architecture ensures streamlined accreditation workflows, real-time transparency, and efficient cost governance—aligned with AWS Well-Architected and FinOps principles.
 

 

Challenge

As eAccreditation platform on AWS usage grew, so did its operational complexities and costs. The challenges faced in:

  • Identifying underutilized or idle resources
  • Gaining visibility into savings plan and reserved instance opportunities
  • Managing complex cost structures across accounts
  • Implementing FinOps governance and accountability models

 

Solution: FinOps Managed Services by Harman

Our FinOps Managed Services team worked with Liaison’s eAccreditation platform team to implement a structured and proactive approach across the FinOps lifecycle—Inform, Optimize, and Operate.


1. Inform: Visibility and Allocation

  • Deployed Ternary for cost visualization, anomaly detection, and resource-level granularity.
  • Delivered monthly reports with categorized cost drivers and business-unit level allocation.
  • Enabled real-time dashboards for key stakeholders to track spend against budgets.

2. Optimize: Continuous Savings Implementation Leveraging both AWS-native and third-party tools:

  • Savings Plans & Reserved Instances:
    • Identified and implemented Compute and EC2 Savings Plans.
    • Recommended Reserved Instance purchases based on consistent usage patterns.
  • Resource Rightsizing and Cleanup:
    • EC2 Instance Rightsizing via Ternary recommendations and AWS Compute Optimizer.
    • EBS Rightsizing by analyzing volume utilization metrics.
    • Automated deletion of idle EBS volumes using lifecycle policies.
    • Enabled S3 lifecycle policies for infrequent access and archival transitions.
  • These actions collectively reduced monthly AWS spend by 20–30% within the first quarter.

3. Operate: Governance and Automation

  • Set up FinOps KPIs and regular cadence reviews with finance and engineering teams.
  • Instituted tagging standards, budgeting alerts, and accountability ownership across departments.
  • Developed a playbook for ongoing savings, including auto-approval workflows for identified opportunities.

 

Sample screenshots of cost optimization  


Sample 1: Savings plan opportunities from AWS console:

With compute savings plan:

With EC2 savings plan:

 

Sample 2: Reserved Instance opportunities from AWS console:

 

Sample 3: EC2 instance rightsizing from Ternary:

 

Sample 4: EBS rightsizing from Ternary:

 

Sample 5: EBS Idle volumes deletion from AWS console:

 

Sample 6: S3 lifecycle enablement from Ternary:

 

Outcomes

  • Cost Savings: Realized 25% monthly AWS cost reduction within three months.
  • Operational Efficiency: Streamlined cloud cost governance and reduced manual reporting effort.
  • Increased Accountability: Created a culture of cost ownership across teams through FinOps principles.
  • Scalable Framework: Established a reusable FinOps framework for future cloud expansion