Multi-tenant architecture, also known as multi-tenancy, is the idea of having your users (also known as tenants) share a pool of resources on a single piece of hardware.

To understand multi-tenancy, imagine you had a single computer, running a single program. Multi-tenancy is like having multiple applications run on one computer, while single-tenancy is like buying a new computer each time you had to open a new application.

Let’s suppose opening a YouTube video on Google Chrome counted as one program (and that you couldn’t open a new tab on Google Chrome). This would be the result:

However, unlike new Google Chrome instances, every tenant’s data is logically separated, such that no tenant has access to another tenant’s data, unless they have permission to do so.

The two main reasons to use single-tenancy architectures is

1. They’re really really easy to setup. For the most part, you usually just have to give each tenant their own private database. Also, if your tenant needs a specific kind of environment that no other tenant uses, this is also easy to do, because each tenant can have their own private environment. Suppose one tenant wants to use PostgreSQL, another one wants to use MySQL, and third wants to use OracleDB. Assuming you have an interface to handle different types of databases, that would be no problem at all, because each tenant has their own database.
2. It’s “more secure” than multi-tenancy architectures. Proponents of single-tenancy architectures will say that since you’re sharing resources on a single piece of hardware, you might have huge security vulnerabilities. This is because your tenants are typically separated by virtual machines/containers, with these VMs/containers being on the same computer. It stands to reason then, that if someone finds a vulnerability in the hypervisor that you’re using, then they can escape the VM/container (also known as a hypervisor attack) and theoretically access every tenant’s data on that machine.

Note that point 2, while a potential concern, is not really much of a concern. There are very few organizations that care more about security than the NSA (National Security Agency), and even the NSA reports these kinds of shared-tenancy vulnerabilities are incredibly rare, and that there “have been no reported isolation compromises in any major cloud platform”. Should you be afraid of hypervisor attacks over the massive cost savings of a multi-tenancy architecture? Probably not.

Now that you understand the basics of multi-tenancy architectures, let’s talk about why elite performers use multi-tenancy architectures.

Elite Performers Are Lightning Fast

The five essential characteristics of cloud computing, according to Accelerate’s State of DevOps 2019 Report, are:

1. On-demand self-service (allow the consumer to provision resources)
2. Broad network access (works on most platforms)
3. Resource pooling (multi-tenancy)
4. Rapid elasticity (rapid scaling)
5. Measured service (can control optimize, and report usages)

Of these five characteristics, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured services are all directly related to, or made easier with multi-tenancy. In other words, just by using a multi-tenancy architecture, you should already have three of these five things checked off, assuming you are following generally good practices. On-demand self-service and broad network access can be equally easily done with either single-tenancy or multi-tenancy architectures.

It should come to no surprise, then, that “elite performers were 24 times more likely to have met all essential cloud characteristics than low performers”. So clearly, the elite performers are using multi-tenancy architectures, but what’s the material gain?

Image courtesy of Accelerate’s State of DevOps 2019

More deployments, faster deployments, faster recoveries, and fewer failures. And not just by small margins either, recovering from incidents 2604 times faster is like the difference between recovering from an issue in a week, and recovering in just under 4 minutes.

Elite Performers Are Worth Their Weight in Gold

So how much exactly are elite performers saving with multi-tenancy architectures? According to Accenture, their work with police departments in the UK to switch over to multi-tenancy architectures will save a projected estimate of $169 million pounds (~$220 million USD). And on top of that, by making this switch, they claim that “time and workload gains in incident reporting can be upwards of 60%”. While switching to a multi-tenancy architecture is not easy, those are huge savings, brought mostly in part due to centralized data.

In multi-tenancy architectures, every tenant shares the same database, which makes sharing data much easier. According to Accenture, the average state in the U.S. has “300 different record systems”. That means that in the U.S.’s law enforcement agencies, there should be a minimum of 15,000 different databases.

Imagine you had to fetch data from 15,000 different databases. You don’t have access to any of them, and they’re all potentially in different formats with no national standardization. How do you coordinate such a massive task? Sure, you could email every single enforcement agency and have them manually share their data with you, but that would take on the scale of months to years.

Now imagine that all law enforcement agencies shared one database, with a handful of different standardized schemas. If you wanted to access a list of known offenders in Texas and Ohio, and merge them with some other table, you can do so without having to first convert everything into a standardized format, because they’re guaranteed to be in the same format. This makes everything incredibly easy to handle, and best of all, you can access them on-demand because the data is centralized, so you can get them instantly if you have admin-level authorization.

Elite performers who use multi-tenancy architectures save money, and accelerate data sharing. With savings like these, elite performers are absolutely worth their weight in gold.

Conclusion

Elite performers use multi-tenancy architectures, and while it’s true that using a multi-tenancy architecture won’t automatically turn you into an elite performer overnight, it will certainly set you on the right path.

Following good cloud computing practices is essential to speeding up development times and reducing costs. If you are interested in learning more, I strongly advise you to read Accelerate’s State of DevOps 2019, which is sponsored by Google, Deloitte, Pivotal, and other great tech companies.

One of the best ways to improve at your craft is to just copy the best. Is it original and creative? Not at all. But is it effective? Absolutely.