Talk:Multitenancy

Multitenancy or Multi-tenancy
Most of the recent published research on multi-tenant architectures uses a hyphenated version of the word (multi-tenancy vs. multitenancy). I changed this in the text, but I am unsure about how to change the name of the page, or who makes the decision on whether to change the page name or not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jayelston (talk • contribs) 19:47, 8 August 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.55.211.66 (talk) 08:31, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Much Ado
From TD Anthony: As the definition of a term that is rather simple, old (20+ years), and generic (Saas, telecom, mainframe, database, etc) the article could have been a tad shorter and less hyperbolic.

I might have added: The term "multi-tenancy" was re-incarnated from its use in the real estate business wherein it signified how a building that might have otherwise have been rented and used by a single tenant was rented to multiple tenants that shared the common facilities. Around the 1980's, the computer and telecommunications industries started to adopt the phrase to define how large and expensive products could be used to serve multiple customers or groups within a single running instance of the product to reduce the cost to each customer and the resources consumed.

Mainframe databases and corporate PBX's are good examples. These products incorporated a high level of configuration segmentation and usage isolation that, at first, was meant to isolate the use of the products by different subsidiary companies or divisions. A case in point is where a PBX that is owned by a large company in an office building is re-programmed to also provide isolated phone functions to a smaller neighboring tenant in the same building.

Thus, multiple entities (such as tenants) using a single instance of a larger product == Multi-tenancy Xor42 (talk) 17:15, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

To Anonymous: "Multi tenant Vs multicustomer"

Multitenancy can be (but is not necessarily) multi-customer. Multitenancy refers to when multiple groups share a single product through the segmentation and isolation of configurations, data, and usage. As such, those multiple groups may be separate customers or simply different departments, divisions, or usage applications of the same main customer.

--- To Einstein9073: 1. Although I found the article more industry analytical (blurb regurge) and less techno-academic (dry and wordy), it's fairly accurate. 2. Re: There being no positive or negative to a simple and generic architectural characteristic, "seems overwhelmingly positive" appears ill-chosen. Perhaps you meant sycophantic or hyperbolic to which I might give a slight nod. 3. Re: References biased: In today's capitalist world, the details of architectural techniques are now almost always promulgated through "white papers" written by companies that employ the technique. Similarly, most industry standards are created, explicated and promoted by, and for, the creators of the standard - MS Office, Adobe PDF, Sun Java, ad nauseum. So, don't hold your breath unless you turning blue. --- T (talk) 23:03, 10 March 2011 (UTC) The article implies that a multi-tenant solution requires a single instance and that is simply not true. "an update on this instance may cause downtime for all tenants even if the update is requested and useful for only one tenant". All that is required for a multi-tenant solution is that they are using the same codebase and shared hosting resources but need not require that they be the same instance. For example, one could build an web application with 100 tenants where 50 tenants are using version 1, 20 tenants are using version 2 and 30 are using version 3. Updating an instance does not necessitate that it will affect all clients unless the system has specifically been designed that way. I.e., one variant of a multi-tenant solution is that the instance of the software and the storage are all shared however that is not the only variant. One can make a multi-tenant solution where the instance of the software varies by tenant but the storage is shared. One can make a multi-tenant solution using the same instance but separate storage. One can make a multi-tenant solution where the instance of the software can vary by tenant and the storage is separate.

Bias
Sorry, but the viewpoint of this article seems overwhelmingly positive and seems geared more as a sale brochure rather than describing exactly how this works and its advantages/disadvantages compared to alternatives. I would like to see more technical detail on how multitenancy works. Also, currently most of the references come from articles written by companies actively pushing multitenancy, so again I would like to see more balanced, or at least less obviously biased sources. 196.205.118.246 (talk) 19:03, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Fix it then! That's the idea of wikipedia, after all. Do your research, and fix the page so both sides are represented fairly. --Einstein9073 (talk) 18:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

--Richardbourke (talk) 12:12, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) I agree it's a bit too sales-ey in its language. I'll remove references to products offering SaaS multi-tenancy, and generally stress the fact that this concept has been around under different guises for about 40 years

Multi client
Multitenancy or Multi client capability ? http://www.dict.cc/?s=multi+client Mandantenfähigkeit —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.39.129.34 (talk) 16:38, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

as the IP above mentioned, "Mandantenfähigkeit" (which is already linked to as the equivalent german term in the article) has a long history prior to SaaS. Time-sharing mainframes had it in the 60's, and SAP software has always had it. I'll add a paragraph to the history section

--Richardbourke (talk) 12:00, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

OK to remove POV/Weasel/Peacock tags?
I think I've made the article less SaaS specific, and also removed anything that looks like a recommendation for a particular product.

Comments and changes welcome, otherwise I'll remove the three tags in a couple of weeks. --Richardbourke (talk) 12:39, 23 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your work. I think the problem is still present though. Subsolar (talk) 00:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Requested move 5 June 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: NO consensus &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 13:43, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Multitenancy → Multi-tenancy – It seems to me that older software companies seem to refer to it as multitenancy, while the trend is now towards multi-tenancy. Multitenancy seems to be on the way out, given the clunkier name. Sources still seem 50/50.

Techopedia, Oracle, and Microsoft Azure prefer no hyphen. Webopedia, MSDN, (Azure really doesn't know what it's doing), prefers the hyphen. An IEEE search shows marginally more hyphen uses than non hyphen uses menaechmi (talk) 18:13, 5 June 2017 (UTC) --Relisting.  Anarchyte  ( work  &#124;  talk )  15:45, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I don't see the need for this change.--Cúchullain t/ c 14:20, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps Multitenancy should redirect to Apartment or Roommate and this article should be moved to Multitenancy (software) or Multi-tenancy (software). Upon encountering this in the list at WP:RMC, I thought it was a discussion of a real estate phenomenon. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:38, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment withdrawn. A web search confirms that the use of this term is heavily dominated by the software context. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:32, 19 June 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Virtualization Section
All of this info seems correct, but no sources are provided, and it reads a bit like an Op Ed. I'm not an editor. I read this page out of interest and found that section out of place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.177.182.126 (talk) 00:38, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

How is this different from client-server architecture?
It seems like this is just about an application that runs on a server and can be accessed by several clients simultaneously? The article mentions "tenants", but that word is never explained, so the non-knowledgeable reader is left in the dark as to whether it just means "clients" or has some specialized, technical meaning. 178.85.213.90 (talk) 16:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Examples
A list of current example multi-tenanted applications would be useful. FreeFlow99 (talk) 12:21, 13 June 2024 (UTC)