“Multi-tenant SaaS cloud”

Abstract

Multi-tenant applications are usually cloud based software services which can serve different users at the same time. This is done using single instance of applications by sharing hardware, infrastructure, data storage and virtualization. To achieve multi tenancy different approaches are there at every layer (Application, Data, hardware). Software-as-as-Service (SaaS) is a new approach for developing software, and it is characterized by its multi-tenancy architecture and its ability to provide flexible customization to individual tenant. SaaS (Software as a Service) is a modern approach to deliver large scalable enterprise software as a service on Internet. Cloud computing platform provides the scalability, availability and utility computing for services on Internet. There are many technical challenges involved in SaaS development. One of them is multi-tenancy, which allows single instance of software to serve multiple organizations by accommodating their unique requirements through configuration at the same time. The target SaaS platform is composed of the key components that supports SaaS Application execution environment that serves multiple tenant using a single service instance. An example scenario of SaaS software lifecycle is also described to explain how the target platform would be operated from development and deployment of SaaS application to configuration by tenants.