Comparison Table: Single-Tenant and Multi-Tenant Strategies

Comparison Table: Single-Tenant and Multi-Tenant Strategies.md

Criteria	Single-Tenant	Multi-Tenant
Definition	A software application or instance that serves only one customer or organization, with dedicated resources and no sharing of data or infrastructure with other customers	A software application or instance that serves multiple customers or organizations, with shared resources and data isolation between tenants
Advantages	- High performance - Strong security and compliance - Managed utilization and performance - Speciality hardware and configuration environments - High availability and disaster recovery - Highly controlled environments	- Low cost - Rapid provisioning and deployment - Off-the-shelf solutions - Standard compliance - Highly scalable
Business Size	Midsize to large enterprises with a global user base, 100-unlimited users	Small to midsize business firms, 10-250 users across multiple locations
Compliance	Dedicated configurations, hardware and security layers. Compliance specific to the industry. High visibility and control for governance, audits and control measures enforcement	Standardized compliance measures
Cost	Expensive with a high Total Cost of Ownership	Low-cost solutions
Customization	Highly customizable	Standardized ready-made solution
Data Ownership	Customers retain full ownership of their data, which is stored within their dedicated instance	Tenants do not have complete control over their data, as it's stored in a shared environment. Data ownership and privacy concerns might arise, particularly in highly regulated sectors
Data Privacy	Strict data privacy is maintained, as each customer's data is isolated from other tenants	Data privacy might be compromised if proper isolation measures are not taken, although this varies depending on the specific implementation
Governance	Each customer has their own governance model, ensuring regulatory compliance and data sovereignty	Centralized governance models ensure uniform compliance across all tenants. However, this might not meet the specific regulatory requirements of certain industries or geographic regions
Hardware	Dedicated physical resources	Logical differentiation between users
Integration	Integration with third-party services or legacy systems might be more challenging due to the unique setup for each customer. However, direct integration with the customer's systems is possible	Standardized APIs and connectors simplify integration with third-party services or legacy systems, as they're designed to work with multiple tenants. However, custom integrations might require additional effort and cost
Maintenance and Updates	Management and maintenance responsibilities shared by users	Managed by the cloud vendor
Performance	Dedicated resources usually result in faster response times and improved performance. However, this might depend on the specific workload and usage patterns	Shared resources can potentially lead to slower response times, especially during peak usage periods. Resource contention might occur when multiple tenants require high CPU, memory, or I/O operations simultaneously
Pricing	Typically higher priced due to dedicated resources and infrastructure	Generally lower priced due to resource sharing and economies of scale
Scalability	Fixed resources for predictable workload requirements	Capability for cloud bursting and resource poolings
Security	Highly secure cloud environments	Standardized security controls
Utilization	Limited optimization — planned for long-term future projections. Organizations may enforce specific governance controls that may impact ease of use for end-users in favor of security and compliance	Optimized for a wide customer pool. Easy to add users and maintain high resource utilization
Use cases	- Mission-critical IT workloads and sensitive business information storage - Predictable workloads - Strong governance, control, compliance and audit requirements	- Resource-intensive IT workloads with low requirements on security and performance - Unpredictable and dynamic peak resource utilization. - Low in-house IT expertise