Are unoptimised workloads quietly undermining your cloud ROI?

Cloud promised agility, scalability, and cost savings. And for many organisations, it delivered—at least initially; but for those still running legacy applications, cloud hasn’t been a golden ticket. It’s often been a source of sticker shock, spiralling complexity, and performance issues.

These legacy systems, still mission-critical in many sectors, weren’t built for the cloud. They hold decades of data, support day-to-day operations, and interact with other ageing tech that doesn’t always play nice in a cloud-native environment. And yet, in the rush to digitise and move fast, many organisations lifted and shifted these workloads to the cloud without optimising them first.

Now, they’re paying the price.

Unexpected costs of legacy lift-and-shift

As tech leaders faced mounting pressure to accelerate their move to the cloud, many made the right call for the time: move fast to stay competitive. But in that urgency, long-term optimisation and strategic planning were often overlooked—especially when it came to legacy workloads.

These systems tend to be tightly interwoven with other business-critical processes. They weren’t designed to operate in distributed, virtualised environments. As a result, they can suffer from degraded performance, increased latency, and poor integration with modern apps. This isn’t just an annoyance—it can cause serious disruption to customer service, supply chains, and internal operations.

Reality check: Legacy systems aren’t built for cloud

In industries like manufacturing, utilities, and logistics, legacy apps are more than old code—they’re the lifeblood of daily operations. They manage inventory, route trucks, reconcile accounts, and track compliance. Replacing or rewriting them is often prohibitively expensive or operationally risky.

So when businesses raced to the cloud, many opted for speed over strategic planning. That meant lifting-and-shifting those legacy systems into the cloud without rearchitecting them for cloud-native environments. It was a move made in haste, and now it’s catching up.

Additionally, these legacy apps can carry over their inefficiencies into the cloud. Poor integration, limited scalability, and performance lags all start to show once they’re taken out of their native on-prem environments.

Today, managing cloud spend remains a top challenge for many organisations, with the lion’s share of costs driven by unoptimised usage and overprovisioned resources. Unsurprisingly, this has prompted a rethink: an ADAPT study reveals that 61% of organisations are now considering workload repatriation – a strategic shift where workloads or data are moved from the cloud back to on-premises infrastructure or a different cloud provider.

Business impact of a mismatched cloud strategy

When legacy systems are moved to the cloud without proper optimisation, businesses often face cascading issues that erode expected cost savings and performance gains—impacting both operations and financial outcomes.

Licensing, performance, and compatibility pitfalls

Legacy applications often have licensing models ill-suited to the cloud’s flexible nature, leading to overprovisioning and wasted spend. Performance can also take a hit as apps built for on-prem hardware struggle with latency, integration, and downtime. Some legacy systems simply aren’t cloud-compatible without costly refactoring, disrupting workflows and connected systems.

Limited visibility and overspending

Without the right tools, IT teams lack visibility into actual cloud usage, leading to overprovisioning and inefficient resource allocation. Businesses end up paying for more than they use.

Losing sight of ROI and strategic goals

One of the most overlooked consequences is the inability to track ROI post-migration. Organisations start with goals of cost savings and agility, but without ongoing optimisation, those goals fade as costs rise and resources remain underutilised.

Hidden pitfalls of mismatched cloud strategies

Ultimately, cloud strategies must be tailored—because a ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ rarely delivers long-term value. Unoptimised cloud deployments often result in:

• • Licensing inefficiencies – Legacy applications may have licensing models that don’t align with the elasticity of cloud platforms, leading to overprovisioning and unnecessary spend.
  • Performance challenges – Apps that run reliably on-prem may experience latency, integration difficulties or downtime in a public cloud environment.
  • Compatibility issues – Certain systems and workloads simply aren’t compatible with cloud infrastructure without expensive refactoring.
  • Visibility gaps – Many teams don’t have the right tooling in place to monitor workload usage, resource consumption, or ROI in real-time.
  • Security risks – Legacy security models may not adapt well to cloud environments, leading to misconfigurations, compliance issues, or vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit.
  • Talent and skill gaps – Without cloud expertise, teams may find it difficult to properly optimise, secure, or manage their cloud infrastructure.
  • Cost management difficulties – Beyond licensing inefficiencies, many organisations struggle with unexpected cloud costs due to data egress fees, idle resources, or inefficient scaling.
  • Fragmented vendor strategies – Multiple IT vendors involved in different parts of the environment can lead to misaligned cloud strategies and inconsistent deployments. As organisations look to reduce vendor sprawl, many are seeking guidance to streamline operations while modernising existing legacy systems.

When these problems go unchecked, the result is cloud sprawl, cost blowouts, and missed business objectives.

Smarter infrastructure starts with the right balance

The takeaway? The answer isn’t abandoning the cloud—it’s about balance. If anything, repatriation and rebalancing isn’t a step back – it’s a strategic step forward. It’s about understanding which workloads are best for private or on-prem environments. 

What’s more, hybrid IT environments that combine cloud, on-premises, and private infrastructure can provide the flexibility, control, and performance that different workloads require. According to Gartner, 90% of organisations will adopt a hybrid cloud strategy by 2027.

Let’s face it: Some workloads are better off repatriated. Others need replatforming or replacement. 

But without a structured optimisation process—and a partner who can assess your entire IT footprint—businesses risk throwing good money after bad.

IPD Group – From legacy lethargy to cloud confidence

Let’s explore a real-world example that brings these ideas to life.

When ASX-listed electrical distributor IPD Group rapidly scaled its operations—from 120 to over 450 users—the cracks in its legacy systems began to show.

Understandably, with more than 450 staff and rapid growth through acquisitions, IPD’s technology environment was under pressure. The systems hadn’t kept pace with the business, and the internal IT team of 10 was stretched thin, spending most of their time reacting to issues instead of planning for the future.

The cracks were showing – disconnected systems, untrustworthy data, inefficient manual processes, and growing cyber security risks due to outdated hardware. It was clear the business needed a smarter, more resilient infrastructure strategy.

A partner, not just a provider

IPD approached several providers but found many were focused on selling products rather than solving problems. Interactive took a different approach—looking at the whole picture.

The team at Interactive helped IPD design a hybrid cloud model, consolidating legacy workloads and modernising its infrastructure using a blend of Azure public cloud, private infrastructure, and 24/7 cyber security operations powered by Microsoft Sentinel.

Real results: from firefighting to future-facing

The results were game-changing.

• • 200 hours saved per week: With the burden of managing legacy hardware removed, each member of the IT team gained back 20 hours per week—time that could now be spent on innovation and strategic planning.
  • Improved security posture: Interactive implemented robust cyber security measures, including a managed Security Operations Centre that gave the board confidence and clarity.
  • Increased agility: With a modern, flexible infrastructure platform, IPD was able to scale services and respond to business needs much faster.
  • Significant cost savings: By moving away from outdated on-prem infrastructure and avoiding unnecessary cloud costs, IPD achieved substantial operational efficiencies.

Realignment isn’t retreat—it’s progress with purpose

It’s stories like these—where legacy systems once held a business like IPD back, only to be transformed through the right partnership—that highlight what’s possible when organisations take a ‘smarter approach’ to infrastructure. Cloud is no longer a binary decision. Forward-looking CIOs and CFOs are re-evaluating the workloads they migrated years ago—and making smart choices about what belongs where.

For many, optimisation is the new mandate. Whether that means:

• • Repatriating non-performant workloads to private infrastructure,
  • Consolidating environments to avoid duplication, or
  • Or partnering with experts who provide transparency and governance.

The goal remains the same: align your IT investments with your business goals.

It’s time to optimise – not just migrate 

As the cloud matures and IT leaders come under pressure to justify investments, there’s a growing realisation: cloud isn’t inherently cost-effective or efficient. It only delivers value when workloads are optimised, right-sized, and well-managed.

At Interactive, we help organisations like IPD reassess their infrastructure strategy, reduce costs, and build resilient, high-performing IT environments—public, private, or hybrid. Because the real win isn’t just getting to the cloud—it’s making the cloud work for your business.

If your cloud costs are creeping higher and your legacy apps are holding you back, it might be time for a rethink. With the right partner and the right mix of public, private and on-prem infrastructure, you can optimise your IT environments and finally unlock the ROI you were promised—and ensure your infrastructure works as hard as your business does.

Let’s have a conversation

Discover how Interactive can help you optimise your IT landscape—cloud, on-prem, and everything in between.