Keys to achieving true multi-tenancy in enterprise settings

During the past few years, when cloud computing was relatively young and finding its place in the technology marketplace, multi-tenancy was often considered a side benefit of a cloud solution that may help cloud vendors, but have minimal impact on the end user. However, this is changing, and multi-tenancy's user-centric attributes have come to the forefront of the enterprise consciousness because the technology has matured to offer numerous benefits in the enterprise.

According to a recent ZDNet report, this has made multi-tenancy a critical issue in cloud computing plans that is beginning to define enterprise-class cloud environments. This is simultaneously a sign that the cloud is beginning to become mainstream and a display that SaaS models are cemented as an important method of computing, the report said.

The recent popularity of multi-tenant solutions has created a rift of sorts in the industry, the report said, as some cloud providers are beginning to deploy software systems that they are marketing as multi-tenant platforms even though they are not truly capable of serving in this capacity, the report said.

Citing a cloud provider's recent announcement of a multi-tenancy solution, the report said many systems for multi-tenant cloud computing are somewhat shallow. As a result, they only address the basic needs of making a program capable of working compatibly with multiple cloud systems and do not truly offer multi-tenant computing capacity.

In most cases, the SaaS solutions that offer partial multi-tenancy are only addressing the software platform itself. The report said this offers businesses many important benefits, including making it easier to achieve full multi-tenancy, but they do not enable a completely multi-tenant solution. Instead, the platform-based multi-tenancy solutions, which are capable of creating a return on investment and improve functionality, are just capable of providing a foundation for multi-tenancy. To achieve full multi-tenancy, the report said cloud solutions need to not only impact the platform, but reconfigure an application's core architecture.

Because these platform-centric multi-tenancy emulation programs are unable to impact the architecture of a cloud application, they are somewhat limited in their actual potential. The report said they serve to get companies part of the way to complete multi-tenancy, but do not delve deeply enough into the application infrastructure to support full multi-tenancy.

True multi-tenancy has the potential to enable advanced computing architectures within the cloud. Speaking to the Indianapolis Star, industry expert Patrick Harr said cloud computing has the potential to be the great equalizer that helps all companies deploy advanced resources. Multi-tenancy, Harr said, represents a significant maturation in the technology that takes it beyond a simple resource rental service and helps companies make the most out of the cloud.

In a multi-tenant environment, companies can leverage the exact resources they need at any point, experiencing vast potential for scalability and improved reliability. This occurs, Harr told the news source, because multi-tenancy uses virtualized servers to enable companies to share resources securely with other organizations on the same server. As a result, a small company may be able to leverage an advanced application, but only pay a small amount for it because most of the rental fee is being covered by a major organization, which may use the vast majority of the virtual server to run the same applications. By sharing these resources, all organizations can use multi-tenancy to deploy applications within their price range and take maximum advantage of the cloud's potential, Harr told the news source. As a result, multi-tenancy is becoming a critical cloud enabler that can help companies leverage the technology regardless of their size and budgetary limitations.