A method and system for collaborative workload placement and optimization. Specifically, the disclosed method and system entail implementing metric exchange between hosts in a clustered or non-clustered environment to perform infrastructure workload placement and optimization decisions. The exchange of metrics may be performed through a lightweight service, which would not impact any existing environment resource utilization. Further, resource utilization maps may be used to offer near real-time tracking of resource utilization across the aforementioned hosts, thereby facilitating resource utilization forecasting for the efficient placement and optimization of workloads throughout the environment.