One of the biggest and fasted drawing markets in the software development industries are Cloud based services and applications. With Gartner's latest evaluations it is evident that they are one of the major revenue generating sources in 2020 by bagging$110.5 billion and are expected to grow exponentially to $143.7 billion by 2022.
The credit for this growth can be provided to the two different verity which it provided in terms of its Architecture: Single Tenant & Multi-Tenant, which is it supports traditional, standard web solutions for single businesses as well as it allows multiple business and users to access its variety of resources at the same time.
Single-Tenant Architecture
Signe Tenant Architecture based SaaS Solutions are those systems wherein all the resources like servers databases are dedicatedly used by a single customer / tenant. With no resource or instance sharing required.
It is more like living in a rented bungalow which is leased fully by an individual and no resource sharing is required at all. Being a single owner of such a big property is costly. Hence we can say that single tenant architecture is not very pocket friendly if you are looking to develop a solution in a tight budget.
Multi-Tenant Architecture
SaaS based solutions with multi-tenants architecture are basically those systems that support multiple customers/organizations at the same time using single instance of the software application service keeping the data of each tenant/customer secure from other tenants of the solution.
It is more like living in a hostel wherein the infrastructure, electricity, food and other essentials are provided by the owner however the space is shared by the tenants who are living in there. Hence we can say it one of the most cost effective and pocket friendly solutions for small business looking to develop systems in a tight budget and low investment.
Benefits of Multi-tenant Architecture
Be it single tenant or multi-tenant architecture both have their own plus and minus pointers, however if we follow the customer inclination trends most of the business opt for multi-tenant architecture. Here are five major reasons why Multi-tenancy is more popular in the software development industry than Single tenancy:
Offers Scalability
Multi-tenant architecture is proved to be highly scalable when it comes to managing the system infrastructure. In a multi-tenant solution the vendor will not have to add new data centre every time a new tenant walks into the system.
In fact the vendor can just a single hardware to the solution and increase the efficacy of the entire solution by my folds there by enhancing the user experience for not only the new customers who are just added to the system but also for the old and existing system users.
Enhanced Updates and Upgrades
A multi-tenant architecture based solution uses single code-base and databases. Thereby making the updates, upgrades and maintenance processes for a multi-tenant architecture is much easier, faster and enhanced.
The major reason why a multi-tenant solution gains mileage over single tenant solution is the vendor does not really have to upgrade and enhance each instance of the software to make a single update, they can just tweak the global codebase and the updates will reach all the tenants at once.
Easy to Customize
In a single tenant based architecture the customization task becomes complex as the user has to get the actual application code tweaked to get a simple customization done. It is not only expensive but also time taking.
However in a multi-tenant architecture based solution customization is a cake walk as the actual underlying code base remains untouched, as the user has a additional layer wherein the customization can be done without having to deal with the application actual codebase. The user has the ability to patch up their codes and make the system custom to their needs.
Cost Effective and Offers Great ROI
The cost of investment in a single tenant architecture based application is much higher than that of the multi-tenant based architecture. As not only a multi-tenant architecture based application saves a lot of money in updates and customization but the cost of initial investment is also low, as a shared set of resources is used.
In a single tenant architecture based application the hardware cost is to be bared by single user only, in fact to add efficiency to each instance the user has to pay a separate amount. However in a multi-tenant architecture based solution the cost of infrastructure and hardware management is way too low as enhancement is single instance is required.
Enhanced Computing Capacity
In a multitenant architecture based SAAS Solution the user does not have to develop an instance and data centre for each user that has joined the application. In fact they can use a single data centres, servers and computing capacities for all the users.
As all the customers in a multitenant based architecture have same infrastructure to use the vendor does not have to configure new ones and connect them to compute data. The run time of the codes is also low as the data that is required to be computed is at single centre only and the system does not have to locate search, sort and compute the data from various data centres.
Multitenant architecture for a SAAS solution can be more fruitful in terms or ROI, cost effectiveness, infrastructure management and upgrades than a single tenant based architecture.
