Single Tenant vs Multi Tenant Saas: Key Difference Between The Two

Single Tenant Software as a Service is an architecture in which each company has their own single instance of the software application and supporting infrastructure. In a single tenancy architecture, every customer has its own independent database and instance of the software. With this tenancy, there is essentially no sharing and the purchaser can tweak as well as customize the software as per requirements.

Multi-tenant Software as a Service is an architecture in which multiple organizations share the same instance to save and store their data. Basically, this instance is partitioned to prevent the organizations from accessing each other’s database and other information. In the multi-tenant architecture, the hosted SaaS application serves the requirements of a large number of clients using the same instance of an application and performs partitioning the data for those within the application itself.

Single Tenant Vs Mutiple Tenant: Something To Think About

Today, every customer is possibly searching for the best deal that comes up with affordable development cost when it comes to creating a SaaS application. However, customers often get confused while opting the best tenant architecture for themselves. Hence, in order to move on forward let’s compare the single-tenant architecture with multi-tenant architecture to better understand their pros and cons.

Single-Tenant Hosting

The Pros

Below are some major advantages that Single Tenant SaaS Architecture offers:

• Enhanced Security: In single-tenancy architecture, the data of each customer is completely separate from another customer. So, there are a very few chances that one customer accesses other customer’s data accidentally. This system can leverage all the security, which is built into the database to prevent and reduce the probability of hacking.
• More Reliable: In single-tenancy, the performance of one client’s system is not affected by the activities of other client’s system. If one client’s software instance goes down while working with a specific tricky integration (for instance if the application includes bugs that result in errors) then, this will not make any wrong impact on another client’s sites.
• Easier to Backup and Restore: Creating a backup or restoring the database in a single-tenant architecture is very easy as every client database has a separate backup. It allows controlling backups and recovery as one system is basically backed up to a dedicated part of SaaS server.
• Self-Hosted Migration: All the customers out there who are using a single tenant system, sometimes may want to migrate from a SaaS environment into a self-hosted environment where they can host the applications on their own managed servers. So, doing this is very simple with Single-tenant architecture.
• Highly Flexible: Single-tenancy allows clients to have a big range of the customization options as both databases as well as software instance are different from each customer. It provides the access to the underlying code for modifying and customizing it however clients want.
• Control Over Upgrades: All the customers using single-tenancy can upgrade service separately. It provides full control over when and how to the upgrade takes place. So, clients can Select to delay or even skip an upgrade cycle. Thus, whenever the customer is busy and does not want to disrupt then, its the best option.

The Cons

Below are major disadvantages associated with single-tenancy architecture while comparing Single Tenant Vs Mutiple Tenant:

• High Cost: The primary downside of the single tenant is higher cost as there is no option of cost sharing for the services like system monitoring, deployment etc. Every new client necessitates a new instance and each of the new instances has to be paid for.
• Resilience: Single-tenant generates resilience at the system level and outside of DDOS attacks at the DNS level there are only a few techniques to take down the whole system. So, a team might experience some issues.
• Costly Maintenance: Single-tenancy environments requires more maintenance as it usually requires upgrades and updates that need to be managed by clients.
• Maximized Resource Utilization: In this architecture, the utilization of resources is not always maximized that may make this service less efficient.

Multi-tenant Hosting

The Pros

The major advantages customers can get with the multi-tenant environment are the following:

• Lower Costs: The multi-tenant architecture brings down the investments in a long-run. While comparing it with single-tenant, a multi-tenant SaaS software costs several notches lesser. It happens because this enables the sharing of services, applications, database, and resources.
• Automated Setup: In a multi-tenant environment, the procedure of sign in is automated. The configuration of domain and sub-domain is also automated. This automatically executes the setup of default data for clients and the configuration of applications so that, users do not face any kind of complications.
• Elasticity and Scalability: Since the multi-tenant software supports thousand plus of clients and the software is very scalable and elastic to the demands. It is not limited just to satisfy a single tenant and it can make a balance among lots of customers. Fundamentally, this is the core operating model of cloud that offers great flexibility at the team level.
• Resource Usage: Since all the resources are shared, the multi-tenancies works at the maximum resource usage that makes for optimum efficiency. This is a constantly moving environment in which resources are being simultaneously accessed.
• Billions of Tenants: Like a single tenant environment, a vendor does not need to create a new and specific data center for each new tenant while using a multi-tenant architecture. In multi-tenant service, the tenants utilize a common infrastructure. It is not necessary to raise the number of data centers for individual tenants.
• Large Capacity: Multi-tenancy offers organizations of all sizes the ability to reside in same infrastructure and data center. This is what we call is “Worry Free Capacity” because customers do no longer have to concern about adding more server or the computing capacity.

The Cons

Below are major disadvantages integrated with multi-tenancy architecture while comparing Single Tenant Vs Mutiple Tenant:

• Excessive Downtime: Multi-tenant architecture basically relays on large and complicated databases, which needs hardware as we as software downtime for the maintenance on regular basis. This results in availability issues for the customers.

• Data Commingling: In multi-tenancies, the data of a customer is stored in the same database where everyone else. Hence, customers rely upon the software to separate the data and isolation. It is the major shortcoming for healthcare, government, and financial clients who are highly regulated and requires a clear separation of the database.
• Frequent Disturbance: If any customer gets affected in the multi-tenant database then, this will affect all the shared customers. Software and hardware problems are found on the multi-tenant database can cause the outage for all customers and a simple upgrade of multi-tenant database upgrades all the customers.
• Less Control: Multi-tenant environment offers less control over the environment and a fewer customization. So, users get less control over the quality of the environment. It leaves multiple access points that could be vulnerabilities in the cyber attacks.

Single Tenant Vs Mutiple Tenant: What’s Best For Your Business?

After considering all the pros and cons and the difference between saas Single tenant Vs Multi-tenant, we conclude that multi-tenancy brings long-term advantages for SaaS application vendors both in terms of development and investments. Yet, it is not an easy task as it entails some vast challenges that need to identify. These challenges may include confidentiality, privacy, and security of the database. Also, multi-tenancy has no single namescape and consolidated organization domain support and global policy adherence are complex to achieve as the policy setting company does not allow to view the settings. If just a single Microsoft licensing agreement exists then, multiple locations to manage the licensing can have limitations. In addition, the compliance configuration is complex to regulate plus enforce on the individual and consistent level.

Hence, users with a dedicated system, network, and storage infrastructure, typically choose single-tenant environment since it provides great flexibility regarding both application and environment. Also, the customer requirements can be tailored to meet the specific customer needs. The single-tenant environment is the right choice when particular tiers of workload or software need: Performance, consistency, customization, and flexibility

• Burst customer traffic vs economics of operating steady state

• Expert to support and manage an infrastructure

• Compliance, security and data isolation

• When not all the software/ workload needs are binary

Winding Things Up

Finding the right SaaS service or set of services that meet an organization’s business model, compliance needs, and culture is the most essential for enterprise digital transformation strategy. After researching on SaaS products that are available for an organization, we discover two different types of architecture one is the single tenant and other is multi-tenant. Here, we highlight some key characteristics of single tenant Vs mutiple tenant deployment so that, users choose the accurate solution that is best for their business growth.