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Trust, or the lack thereof, is the number one factor blocking the adoption of software as a service (SaaS). A case could be made that data is the most important asset of any business—data about products, customers, employees, suppliers, and more. And data, of course, is at the heart of SaaS. SaaS applications provide customers with centralized, network-based access to data with less overhead than is possible when using a locally-installed application. But in order to take advantage of the benefits of SaaS, an organization must surrender a level of control over its own data, trusting the SaaS vendor to keep it safe and away from prying eyes.
To earn this trust, one of the highest priorities for a prospective SaaS architect is creating a SaaS data architecture that is both robust and secure enough to satisfy tenants or clients who are concerned about surrendering control of vital business data to a third party, while also being efficient and cost-effective to administer and maintain.
This is the second article in our series about designing multi-tenant applications. The first article, Architecture Strategies for Catching the Long Tail, introduced the SaaS model at a high level and discussed its challenges and benefits. It is available on MSDN. Other articles in the series will focus on topics such as workflow and user interface design, overall security, and others.
In this article, we’ll look at the continuum between isolated data and shared data, and identify three distinct approaches for creating data architectures that fall at different places along the continuum. Next, we’ll explore some of the technical and business factors to consider when deciding which approach to use. Finally, we’ll present design patterns for ensuring security, creating an extensible data model, and scaling the data infrastructure.
Read the complete article at Multi-Tenant Data Architecture
