e-Book Part 1 : Simplifying SaaS & Multi-tenant Application Development

A lot has been written about SaaS as a business model for monetizing software applications. But there is another dimension to SaaS – which is the technical and architectural dimension. If we have to host a separate server instance for each customer, if we have to maintain a separate code base for each customer, it still remains an ASP model not SaaS.

So SaaS automatically implies Multi-tenancy, Configurability, Scalability and a distributed Data Architecture. And a tenant need not mean a customer. Countries, Distributors or SBUs could be virtual tenants with a hierarchical relationship with the actual customers / user groups using the application. Whether it is for an ISV, Enterprise or Government, whether it is for hosting on-premise, private cloud or public cloud, techcello knows the real challenges of engineering a Multi-tenant SaaS application in all its depth and complexity.

Like we have productized the engineering and architectural expertise in the form of a framework, we are proud to share this expertise in the form of an e-book.

Presenting Part 1 of our e-book…

Tenant Sub Tenant Hierarchy and Tenant Aware Applications

In Multi-tenant SaaS applications, the word tenant is often assumed to mean a customer organization.But it need not be the only use case. For a BPO’s internal application, used by different verticals, each tenant can be one vertical, for which the application is configured differently. For a BFSI (Banking / Finance / Securities / Investment) organization offering a market facing application, the tenant could mean one of the various channels (internal and external) that sell their products. For an ISV with a global network of distributors and resellers, providing solutions to “Retail chains” the tenant could mean any and all of the following: A National Distributor, A Reseller, A Retail chain owner (Corporate office) and a particular retail store.

Non Functional Requirements Check List

An application that addresses a diverse set of stakeholders and multiple levels of user groups is more complicated and technically challenging than an application that is focused on a niche homogenous user base. The Non functional requirements (NFRs) of such applications are hence very critical and important. Defining the NFRs independent of the functional requirements has many benefits. It leads to a focused effort on NFRs, a robust architectural framework, engineering excellence and consistency. The NFR stack when implemented as a loosely coupled framework, could also become a common stack for multiple applications / products, resulting in significant reduction in cost of development, support and maintenance (TCO).

Non Functional Requirements of Government SaaS

A Government SaaS that addresses a diverse set of stakeholders and multiple levels of user groups is much more complicated and technically challenging than a Private SaaS application that is often focused on a niche homogenous user base. The Non functional requirements (NFRs) of such a Government SaaS are hence very critical and important.

Multiple Ways to Build a Multi-tenant SaaS Application

- Paper presented at CloudConnect May2012, Bengaluru

From using PaaS platforms such as Force.com to complete ground-up development, there are many ways to build or migrate to a multi-tenant SaaS Architecture. The session explores the various decision factors involved in choosing a suitable alternative. CTOs and architects will get an overview of the various approaches, the technical as well as commercial implications of each approach and the best practices to be followed.

Choosing an Application Development Platform

High productivity platforms based on 4GL and Visual tools serve the non-technical business users for building simple, long tail applications. They also have disadvantages such as proprietary development environments and platform lock-in.

On the other hand, ground-up development the traditional way, using developers who write code, is not only time consuming but also risky as there is no unified platform, architecture and engineering structure that can be enforced across the organization. The design challenges of Cloud, SaaS and Multi-tenancy, increases this risk multi-fold.

Techcello is a third alternative that gives developers and architects the freedom, flexibility and control of custom development, without the costs and risks associated with ground-up development.