Even in the cloud computing era, meeting service-level agreements (SLAs) of a computing service or application while significantly reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) remains a challenge. Cloud and software defined environments (SDEs) are offering new opportunities for how resources can be utilized to an even higher degree than before—which leads to a reduced TCO for service providers and customers of a service. The traditional method of meeting an SLA is to assess peak workloads and size a system accordingly. This still leads to very low average compute resource utilization rates. This paper presents a novel dynamic and cost-efficient orchestration approach of multi-tenant capable, software defined system topologies based on a monitor-analyze-plan-execute (MAPE) concept. We present the mechanism involved in creating and applying these heuristics and show the results for a cloud-based enterprise content management (ECM) solution. Our approach allows the cloud provider to minimize its resource requirements while staying in compliance with SLAs.