A Design of the Conceptual Architecture for a Multitenant SaaS Application Platform

In this paper, the conceptual architecture of a SaaS platform that enables executing of configurable and multitenant SaaS application is proposed. Even though most of organizations utilize a standardized SaaS application developed by a SaaS developer, each of tenants would have unique requirements regarding service components. The platform provides several features for configuring these aspects of SaaS software such as organizational structure (role sets and access control), user interface, data model, workflow, and business logic. To satisfy multitenancy of SaaS application, we applied metadata driven architecture proposed by Force.com. The target SaaS platform is composed of the key components that supports SaaS Application execution environment that serves multiple tenant using a single service instance. An example scenario of SaaS software lifecycle is also described to explain how the target platform would be operated from development and deployment of SaaS application to configuration by tenants.