Multi-Tenant vs Single-Tenant hosting – these are two terms you’ll hear thrown around in cloud computing. But what exactly do they mean, and what advantages can you find in each environment? Here’s the difference between Multi-Tenant and Single-Tenant
Hosting from an ERP perspective.
Multi-Tenant Architecture
Multi-Tenant architecture is best for a small standard deployment of your critical software. In our case, clients run Multi-Tenant “vanilla” ERP (SAP Business One) for a limited number of users and an “out of the box” deployment. Under this architecture, each “subscribing” company has their own independent database, instance of the software and protected access to their individual deployment. Elements of the multi-tenant are shared with other companies – so Add On’s are not viable and updates are done for all tenants – not on a schedule of your choosing.
The Multi-Tenant architecture offers a few advantages:
- Affordability: With Multi-Tenant, customers share the cost environment, and those savings are reflected in a low per user, per month cost. These OPEX charges normally are advantageous in comparison to CAPEX server and network infrastructure costs.
- Adding users is simple
- Maintenance: With Multi-Tenant, the server belongs directly to the cloud hosting provider (in our case AWS). This means you won’t have to maintain all servers and worry about database management.
Single-Tenant Architecture
A Single-Tenant architecture is more suitable for a larger deployment, with unique Add On’s. In the SME ERP space – Add On’s are the norm – and thanks to advancements in APIs – these are less of an integration worry. However, using Add On’s normally implies that a Single-Tenant architecture is warranted. Your ERP deployment is unique. This means you will have your own environment – not sharing resources with anyone else. So its like having an on-premise deployment, but with the advantages of a hosting resource – like AWS. This has several advantages including:
- Control: With Single-Tenant, the environment is often a single secure server(s) which allows for limited number people with access.
- Ability to Customize: With Single-Tenant, and this control over the environment of the application, you can customize the deployment including integrations through the use of APIs.
- Updates are done at a time of your choosing (not of the hosting provider)
Ultimately whether or Multi-Tenant (more affordable – less flexible) or Single-Tenant (more expensive – more flexible) is best for your business depends on your deployment – but either options has significant advantages over traditional On-Premise deployments.
Our company has recently helped move SAP clients to both Single-Tenant and Multi-Tenant environments. They run SAP Business One on Amazon Web Services. See other blogs to learn about the great benefits of this offering – especially if you are a small to medium sized company and don’t care to worry about internal IT.
If you are ready to learn more about the ways in which SAP Business One (and AWS) can change your business, Acuity is here to help!
