Systems and methods for collapsing resources used in cloud deployments

Methods and systems are provided for managing a cloud deployment of software applications. A plurality of virtual machines of the cloud deployment that are used to operate the software applications are defined. Network communications between the virtual machines are monitored to measure bandwidth utilization by the virtual machines. Resource utilization by each of the virtual machines, such as memory, storage and processor usage, are also monitored. Availability constraints for the software applications are determined. A resource utilization function is defined for the deployment of the software applications for operation on some or all of the virtual machines within the availability constraints. The resource utilization function is solved to determine an updated cloud deployment of the software applications on a selected portion of the virtual machines. The cloud deployment is reconfigured to utilize the selected portion of the virtual machines, thus collapsing the resources utilized by the cloud deployment.