About Cerby

Cerby is a cybersecurity company that extends the reach of identity and access management for applications that standard SSO providers can't cover. Where Okta, Microsoft, or Active Directory leave off, Cerby picks up, automating user account provisioning and managing the unmanaged. Almost all of Cerby's infrastructure runs in AWS, spanning EC2 compute, MySQL RDS databases, and cache instances.

The Problem

Cerby moves fast. As a startup, the engineering team experiments constantly, swapping instance types, scaling up and down, trying new service configurations. That made traditional AWS reserved instances a liability, not an asset.

AWS account reps would periodically recommend reservations; here's a list of what to buy, here's what to pay upfront. But committing to a specific instance type for one or two years, with no flexibility to change, felt like the wrong bet for a company that had no idea what its infrastructure would look like twelve months out. The answer was usually: don't commit. Leave money on the table instead.

Why Archera

Archera was introduced by Cerby's CEO, which meant the team skipped the usual procurement cycle entirely. Leon Garcia, who manages platform and security at Cerby, read up on the platform and immediately saw the fit.

The key differentiators were flexibility and coverage. Archera's Guaranteed Reserved Instances are short-term and resalable. A startup that changes instance types frequently is no longer locked in, and the recommendations didn't stop at EC2. Archera gave Cerby visibility and guidance across EC2, MySQL RDS, and Elasticache, pulling the whole picture together.

"We just purchase the plans and we forget. Set it and forget it, that's exactly what we were looking for."
— Leon Garcia, Platform & Security, Cerby

The Results

Since joining Archera in 2024, Cerby has saved over $111,000. The most concrete example came when the team needed to commit capacity for their database, their highest-spend service at the time.

Cerby wanted to maximize savings, but didn't want to be locked in for years. Archera's recommendations gave them the confidence to go all-in on the commitment, knowing they could scale, change instance types, or sell back the reservation if plans shifted. The decision paid off, and it's one they couldn't have made before.

"We felt confident to purchase the commitment for our database. Knowing that if we needed to scale or change, we're not going to lose money, that was one of the main solutions Archera offered us."
— Leon Garcia, Platform & Security, Cerby

The Bigger Win: No More Procurement Friction

Beyond the savings, Archera changed how Cerby thinks about cloud commitments internally. In the past, at previous companies, making a new infrastructure decision meant a whole process: what instances, what size, how long, is it right-sized? Now, none of that friction exists.

Because Archera's commitments are short-term and refundable, finance doesn't worry about overcommitment. There are no approval cycles to navigate. Engineering can move without waiting.

"I think it's super simple to use the tool. Even with the basic recommendation, you are saving. You don't have to commit to something. I would definitely recommend it to someone else."
— Leon Garcia, Platform & Security, Cerby