SaaS Application Development Services

The concept of multi-tenancy allows using one and the same instance of the SaaS solution and its infrastructure by multiple clients. The latter share a single database and the software as such. However, other tenants cannot see your data as it is kept invisible to them and protected from unauthorized access.

Multi-tenant solutions allow developers to offer services to clients of any scale — from startups with no dedicated infrastructure to large engineering enterprises with the need to use limitless computing capabilities of the cloud.

On the client side, there are three different multi-tenancy approaches of separating users: manual selection of a tenant before authentication, automatic/manual selection of a tenant after authentication, and automatic selection of a tenant by subdomain (white labeling).

On the server side, it can be a standalone app with its own database per tenant, a shared application (or a set of microservices) with a separate database per tenant, or an application with a shared multi-tenant database. The final architecture is usually based on safety rules and the type of tenant isolation.

Security, privacy, and confidentiality requirements insist on strong boundaries and data isolation between tenants, and here we can see the efficiency of SaaS multi-tenant data architecture.

One of the best practices for developers is to host services in the cloud. Among other things, the SaaS approach enables us to perform simple and dynamic horizontal scaling — with the increase in the load on the server, the SaaS application utilizes more capacities of the SaaS platform, and vice versa.

If your company chooses to do so using on-premises servers, your team will have to perform hardware sizing calculations and on a constant basis monitor ongoing server load, while being ready to add up capacities, i. e. buy additional hardware, if need be.

Like most cloud-based services, Software-as-a-Service is hosted online, and you don't have to install any components locally. Like with any service provided in this manner, user access to the software depends on certain factors which are often outside your company's control if you compare a SaaS app to any service deployed in your own datacenter. That is why think about certain measures you can take to make the SaaS constantly available.

Your team can require information on uptime and resilience from your SaaS provider, which is of special significance for critical business services. What is more, ask your business continuity planning team to map out the consequences of downtime for your company and study alternatives. In addition, make sure that you have a valid SLA that contains an uptime guarantee covering critical SaaS services.

Study carefully where service data will be kept and do not hesitate to resort to consulting. Where is your data being stored on the SaaS platform? Does your SaaS provider present this information? Does it meet the regulatory standards required by your enterprise, e.g., SOC2 compliance, or HIPAA, or GDPR? It is vital to learn this information before you start using the service.

Like most cloud services, SaaS apps are based on cloud computing, which entails that your SaaS application will be easily scalable thanks to vast storage capabilities. In most instances, SaaS apps are handled via a comprehensive hybrid multicloud SaaS platform combining your SaaS provider's servers with those of a major provider (AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc.). Make sure you know how your SaaS partner protects its clients' data against integrity and confidentiality issues, data loss and leakage, malware, and other common issues that pertain to SaaS development.

Thanks to its top hardware and software expertise, our SaaS development team understands the industry and is well aware that SaaS apps eliminate some physical security restrictions that shield on-premises data. There is a number of issues that can be encountered when we deal with cloud storage: account or service hijacking, availability, integrity, confidentiality, etc. That is why the security of your SaaS solution should be at the forefront of your enterprise's decision-making process.

Major capacities you'd better take into consideration cover the capability to perform integration with Single Sign On (SSO) providers (e.g., Okta or OneLogin). What is more, do not forget that around 90% of your company's former employees may retain access to some of their cloud accounts after changing the place of work. So take care that your SaaS solution provides automated onboarding and offboarding of accounts. Eventually, the SaaS software should at least include multi-factor authentication to guard against common cyber-attack techniques and means such as password-spraying.

To put it simply, SSO takes your initial login into a system (e.g., your laptop), encrypts it to ensure security (this procedure also goes under the name tokenization), and uses this token to gain access to all other systems in an automatic mode. In this case, you don't have to submit your username and password again.

By introducing this method into your SaaS solution, you get yourself a wide range of benefits. For example, tokens automatically expire, and you can revoke them centrally. When it comes to passwords, SSO technology does not share them with third-party service providers. What is more, password standards can be complex, since users need to type in the password only once a day. Also, users cannot apply one and the same password to access several services, which diminishes the risk of a single site hack.

Do not forget about central management of authentication, which means that your JML process will be streamlined. And last but not least — cost reduction and improved productivity since you will certainly see fewer requests for forgotten passwords.

As you can see, SSO integration is one of the best practices to monitor your SaaS applications and obtain detailed and actionable insight into their usage.