SaaS and the Tenancy Debate

This post on CouldAve highlights a debate that has been a hot topic recently - specifically whether SaaS should always be multi-tenant or not. As he notes, this is close to a religious topic, but one which I believe misses the key point.

A customer buying into the SaaS model is buying a service rather than software, and needs to stick with that understanding. Generally, they are unlikely to be overly interested in the architecture or technology behind the service, other than as much as is relevant to guaranteed service levels.

The post quotes Josh Greenbaum, who points out that this is linked to the maturity of the business / service / software. Offerings aimed at small businesses will probably end up in a multi-tenant model, offering no customisation capabilities and an arms-length support model. However it is likely that larger companies will move towards the SaaS model, and this will present some challenges as greater flexibility is demanded. The multi-tenant model is not designed for this.