Cloud rebalancing act: Why smart businesses are rethinking IT strategy

Did you know that global spending on public cloud services is skyrocketing? Gartner projects end-user spending will reach $723.4 billion in 2025, up from $595.7 billion in 2024. Meanwhile, IDC reports that public cloud spending reached $805 billion in 2024 and is on track to double by 2028.

“Cloud now dominates tech spending across infrastructure, platforms, and applications,” said Eileen Smith, group vice-president, Data & Analytics at IDC.

Yet, many businesses are realising that simply migrating to the cloud isn’t enough—optimising cloud resources is now the real challenge. Companies often face rising costs, security concerns, and performance inefficiencies due to cloud sprawl, underutilised resources, and evolving compliance requirements.

This is where cloud rebalancing comes in. For starters, rebalancing is also about resource right-sizing. What’s more, by reassessing cloud strategies and leveraging cloud load balancing, businesses can achieve greater efficiency, cost savings, and security while ensuring their IT infrastructure aligns with their long-term goals.

Let’s explore what cloud rebalancing is, why companies are rethinking their IT strategies, and how to optimise cloud environments for maximum performance and resilience.

What is cloud rebalancing?

Cloud rebalancing involves redistributing workloads across different cloud environments to enhance performance, control costs, and strengthen security. As businesses scale, cloud sprawl – where resources are inefficiently spread across multiple platforms – can lead to unnecessary complexity and expenses.

Cloud load balancing plays a crucial role in this process by dynamically distributing network traffic, preventing overloads, and ensuring seamless performance across cloud environments.

Why are businesses reconsidering their IT cloud strategy?

Organisations are rethinking their cloud strategies to enhance cost efficiency, scalability, security, and reliability. Many businesses initially migrated to the cloud expecting seamless operations and cost savings, but over time, inefficiencies have emerged. Below are four key drivers pushing businesses to rethink their cloud approach:

Cost optimisation from reduced cloud sprawl

Unmanaged cloud sprawl can lead to unnecessary expenses as organisations pay for redundant services or underutilised resources. Businesses are shifting toward a more streamlined cloud strategy, consolidating workloads and eliminating waste.

Flexibility and scalability

The ability to scale IT infrastructure based on demand is one of the cloud’s biggest advantages. However, businesses often find themselves locked into a single provider, limiting their flexibility.

Cloud rebalancing allows organisations to adopt a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud approach, ensuring they can scale resources dynamically and avoid vendor lock-in.

Security and Compliance

Regulatory requirements in Australia, such as APRA and IRAP compliance, make cloud security a critical concern. Businesses using multiple cloud providers must ensure consistent security policies and visibility across all environments.

Cloud rebalancing helps organisations maintain compliance by strategically placing sensitive workloads in secure environments while using public cloud providers for less critical tasks.

For instance, healthcare organisations store patient data in private clouds while utilising public clouds for analytics and machine learning workloads.

Improved Reliability and Availability

Downtime can be costly for businesses, making reliability a key consideration. For sectors like healthcare, finance, transportation, and utilities, downtime isn’t just a financial burden – it can have severe, far-reaching consequences. Cloud rebalancing ensures that workloads are distributed in a way that minimises risk and improves availability.

By leveraging cloud load balancing, businesses can avoid service disruptions by redirecting traffic to healthy servers in case of an outage.

Role of cloud load balancing

Cloud load balancing is integral to cloud rebalancing. It dynamically distributes traffic across multiple servers, ensuring optimal performance and preventing overloads. Whether businesses operate in a single cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid environment, load balancing solutions help:

• Prevent downtime by redirecting traffic during outages
• Enhance application performance by distributing workloads efficiently
• Improve security by mitigating DDoS attacks and traffic spikes

Multi-cloud vs. Hybrid cloud: Which approach to take?

Choosing between multi-cloud and hybrid cloud depends on business needs. Multi-cloud refers to using multiple public cloud providers, while hybrid cloud integrates private and public cloud environments. Factors such as data centre density, cost, and security requirements influence the decision.

• • Multi-Cloud: Best for businesses wanting to avoid vendor lock-in and increase redundancy.
  • Hybrid Cloud: Ideal for organisations handling sensitive data while leveraging public clouds for scalability.

Best practices for cloud rebalancing

To successfully implement cloud rebalancing, businesses should follow these best practices:

1. 1. Evaluate Workloads and Cloud Resource Allocation: Conduct an assessment of current cloud usage and identify inefficiencies.
   2. Implement Automated Cloud Load Balancing Tools: Utilise AI-driven tools to manage workload distribution dynamically.
   3. Leverage AI-Driven Analytics for Smarter Rebalancing: Predict demand and optimise cloud resources accordingly.
   4. Align IT Cloud Strategy with Business Goals: Ensure cloud investments support overall business objectives.
   5. Iterate and Optimise: Continuously analyse rebalancing efforts and iterate based on feedback and analytics to improve efficiency over time.

The future of cloud rebalancing

The cloud landscape is rapidly evolving, with emerging technologies such as AI-driven automation, edge computing, and serverless architectures influencing cloud strategies. Businesses that proactively embrace cloud rebalancing will stay ahead in terms of cost efficiency, security, and operational resilience. As regulatory requirements continue to tighten, organisations must prioritise cloud governance and workload distribution to ensure long-term success.

Let Interactive help with your cloud rebalancing today

Cloud rebalancing is essential for businesses looking to optimise costs, enhance security, and improve performance. Interactive provides end-to-end cloud services to help businesses navigate complex cloud environments and implement best practices for cloud optimisation. Contact us today to learn how we can assist in rebalancing your cloud strategy for maximum efficiency and resilience.

For more insights on cloud strategy, visit Interactive or explore our Cloud Services.