Cloud Computing: A Multi-tenant Case Study

Cloud computing has enabled businesses to infinitely scale services based on demand while reducing the total cost of ownership. Software as a service (SaaS) vendors capitalized on the scalable nature of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to deploy applications without having the need for heavy upfront capital investment. This study uses a real case study from a Canadian SaaS vendor migrating from a single-tenant applications system to a single-tenant applications (MTA) system. The results of this empirical study show a decrease of a factor of 3 in setup times and a reduction in number of bugs reported and the amount of time required to fix these bugs. Despite the fact that migration from a single-tenant applications system to a multi-tenant system requires some re-engineering efforts, but the benefits of MTA far outweigh these re-engineering costs. Furthermore, migrating to MTA enables firms to focus on their core competences. The empirical results of this study show that in the long run, MTA can enable SaaS vendors to increase the quality of service, performance, service level agreement adherence, re-focus on creating innovative products, lower operational costs and earn higher profits.