A major client was facing a critical cost management crisis with their serverless architecture consuming Auth0 tokens at an alarming rate, 150 times over their contracted limit.
AIM Consulting stepped in to deliver immediate relief through strategic token optimization and caching solutions that not only solved the immediate crisis but created scalable solutions adopted across the entire organization.
Case Study Contents:
- Business Challenge: Critical Token Overconsumption Crisis
- Approach: Comprehensive Token Optimization Strategy
- Results: Dramatic Cost Reduction and Organizational Impact
What AIM Consulting Did:
- Investigated and resolved Lambda token handling issues causing unnecessary API calls and overconsumption
- Implemented Redis-based token caching with dynamic TTL (time-to-live) for efficient token lifecycle management
- Deployed queueing solutions in Elastic Cache Redis and backend services to streamline event handling
- Optimized front-end workflows and service architecture to eliminate redundant token requests
- Enabled knowledge transfer resulting in organization-wide adoption of caching solutions
Business Challenge: Critical Token Overconsumption Crisis
The client’s Lambda services were consuming Auth0 tokens at an unsustainable rate during a major product development and rollout phase. Auth0 logs revealed usage of approximately 800,000 tokens in a single month against a service agreement allowing only 5,000 tokens, representing 150 times their contracted allotment.
This overconsumption created immediate business risks including potential unexpected costs, pressure to upgrade to a significantly more expensive Auth0 plan, and possible service disruptions due to rate limiting. With leadership demanding immediate token usage reduction, the situation required urgent technical intervention to avoid derailing the product launch timeline and budget constraints.
Approach: Comprehensive Token Optimization Strategy
AIM Consulting implemented a multi-pronged approach targeting both immediate relief and long-term sustainability:
- Investigating and fixing Lambda token handling issues that caused unnecessary calls and overconsumption.
- Implementing Redis-based token caching with dynamic TTL (time-to-live) so old tokens could be efficiently evicted just before expiration, reducing redundant token requests.
- Queueing in Elastic Cache Redis and backend services to streamline event handling and reduce bursts of token demand.
- Front-end updates and service improvements to further optimize flows and avoid unnecessary token requests.
Results: Dramatic Cost Reduction and Organizational Impact
The token optimization initiative delivered immediate and measurable business value.
- The client’s token usage dropped from being one of the highest consumers across the organization to less than 1% compared to other teams, according to internal reporting dashboards.
- The Redis-based caching solution proved so effective that other teams adopted it into their own codebases, resulting in a 10x reduction in token usage across the entire organization.
- Most importantly, the client avoided a costly Auth0 plan upgrade, enabling their product to launch on schedule without additional licensing expenses or service disruptions.
Key Takeaways
- Token usage can be a silent cost driver in serverless architectures.
- Simple caching solutions, when designed thoughtfully, can drastically cut costs and improve performance.
- Cross-team collaboration and knowledge sharing ensure that the benefits scale across an organization.
Looking Ahead
While there’s a long-term plan to migrate authentication over to AWS Cognito, the immediate solution delivered by the AIM team has stabilized usage, ensured compliance with the existing Auth0 agreement, and reduced operational costs.
This demonstrates AIM Consulting’s ability to deliver strategic engineering solutions that help clients reduce costs, scale confidently, and achieve critical business milestones.
