This discussion stands true for single tenant and multi-tenant in Azure, AWS, SAP Hana, Servicenow, SAP, Oracle Database, and Salesforce!
Multitenancy in the cloud means using shared services and resources for multiple clients. These resources can include computing, networking, and storage. Each tenant’s data is isolated and is invisible to other tenants. Consider an apartment building as an example. Each tenant has its own key. Each tenant can come and go into their apartment as they please, and they can add and remove items to their apartment, as long as they are following the building guidelines and regulations. So, all the tenants of the building can access the building, but they can only access their own apartments.
Therefore, all the other apartments are secure because you can only access your own. A tenant can invite somebody to their apartment as an authorized person, but by default, each apartment is secured and locked down. So the building is providing us with shared resources. These shared resources can include water, electricity, a sports room, a central hall, a swimming pool, and a terrace. These shared resources are available to the whole building, and as a tenant of this building, you can choose how much, or how little, of these shared resources we wish to use.
The apartment building will meter your usage of these resources, and there we have a multi-tenancy using our shared resources. This is a good example and relationship to what we have over here in the cloud environment. Each tenant can have as small or as big, computing, network, and storage allocations. It is really up to the end-user how big or small they want their environment to be.
What is SaaS?
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a cloud distribution model that offers applications on demand over the internet via the web browser. No installation or infrastructure is required to host applications. SaaS applications are applications hosted in the cloud, instead of physically installed on the computer. It gets automatically updated, has better security, and costs less.
What is Multi-tenancy?
In the same way, multi-tenant architecture offers a single environment that serves a scalable and resilient architecture to serve multiple clients (tenants or users). All users share the same database, application information, and database in a multi-tenant architecture. Here a single software instance (logically separate) can be used by different user groups. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is an example of Multi-Tenant Architecture.
What is multi-tenant architecture in Azure?
Multitenant architecture has multiple tenants sharing the same physical instances of the app like virtual machines, storage, etc. Still, each tenant gets their own logical instance of the app.
Two major types of multi-tenant architecture are application layer multi-tenancy and the database layer multi-tenancy.
Single-Tenant Architecture vs. Multi-Tenant Architecture
In a single tenant architecture, a single software instance serves a single customer. They have their own database or application. But in a multitenant architecture, a single environment serves multiple tenants. All the users have a shared database, application, and resources. A Single Tenant Architecture is basically used in private cloud environments. Examples: Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Oracle Cloud provide a dedicated infrastructure for SaaS apps.
A single tenant SaaS application looks secure and is quick to maintain, but it costs very high. If one device accesses one server (vice-versa) it offers control, security, and reliability, as the data is not accessible by any other application. That server can remotely backup client data and restores it in case of any power loss. Clients have to manually maintain and upgrade their server instances.
Most subscription-based services are based on multi-tenant architecture. Also, corporate and single-user email apps like Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, and Thunderbird fall within this category. Cloud storage services like Google Drive, DropBox, and OneDrive; website platforms like Shopify and Wix; and communication apps like Skype, Slack, and Trello are counted in this category.
Single Tenant Architecture – Separate application and separate database
Multi-Tenant Architecture – One shared application and one shared database
How do you create a multi-tenant SaaS?
If these reasons that we have listed here do not seem enticing, you’ll still find the presence of multi-tenant cloud app architecture backed by Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud-based applications like Dropbox, Slack, Salesforce, and Google, leading the market. top cloud computing companies and cloud computing consultancies like Acropolium are inclined to strengthen the process.
- Plan the SaaS Infrastructure : Create an infrastructure based on the estimated workload, security, isolation, available resources, and customers’ needs.
- Number of tenants and tenant groups that your application supports
- The workload that every tenant will need
- Will premium clients require a separate database?
- Advanced data backup and restoration solutions
- Performance and business metrics
- Optimization and customizability to different tenant categories
- Data privacy and compliance regulations
- Develop tenant management policies : Smaller clients can opt for multitenant shared databases with fewer resources, while others can opt for single-tenant mode with extra computing power.
- Choose a cloud computing platform : For the infrastructure and toolsets to create a multi-tenant architecture-based application – Microservices (Amazon ECS), Elastic Kubernetes Services (Amazon EKS), and Amazon Serverless Computing.
- Implement authorization mechanisms : To implement verification of credentials, checking affiliation, domain rules, and rights – the architecture can either deny access or issue an access token to the backend app to enter the database.
- Set up domain routing : Set up a login URL for the SaaS application based on security requirements. These can be logic URLs, Cryptic URLs, and In-App Redirects.
What is the best advice to go with?
To summarize, adopting a Multi-tenant architecture approach will bring extensive valuable benefits to your SaaS application. Just some of the benefits of multitenancy include: scalability, lower entry costs, and cloud maintain these shared resources. Top cloud computing companies can cluster their requirements and develop personas accordingly. Also, it is advisable to make use of a centralized tenant policy management model. This approach helps in optimizing performance, adding new features, and escalating software updates to various user groups. Moreover, you will need to check your database and organize your customers inside your SaaS. Cloud computing solutions can come in handy with flexible and easy-to-use options for multi-tenant applications on AWS.
Thank you for reading this blog. If you are facing any problem while selecting SaaS developers, then you can consider taking help from ITfirms’ list of top SaaS companies.