A qualitative discussion of different approaches for implementing multi-tenant SaaS offerings1

Abstract

The upcoming business model of providing software as a service (SaaS) not only creates new challenges for service providers but also for software engineers. To enable a cost-efficient service management, the hosted application should support multi-tenancy. For implementing multi-tenancy, several options are available, whereas all of them to a certain degree require a reengineering of the application at hand. Since for many applications this represents the next big evolution step, this paper is devoted to discussing different options for implementing multi-tenancy regarding the initial reengineering effort required for meeting the customer expectations versus cost-saving potential.