Document Open Access Logo

Using Microservices to Customize Multi-Tenant SaaS: From Intrusive to Non-Intrusive

Authors Hui Song, Phu H. Nguyen , Franck Chauvel

PDF
Thumbnail PDF

File

OASIcs.Microservices.2017-2019.1.pdf
  • Filesize: 0.75 MB
  • 18 pages

Document Identifiers

Author Details

Hui Song
  • SINTEF, Oslo, Norway
Phu H. Nguyen
  • SINTEF, Oslo, Norway
Franck Chauvel
  • SINTEF, Oslo, Norway

Funding

This work is funded by the Research Council of Norway under the grant agreement number 256594 (the Cirrus project).

Acknowledgements

We want to thank our colleagues at Supper Office and Visma for the fruitful collaboration in the Cirrus project.

Cite AsGet BibTex

Hui Song, Phu H. Nguyen, and Franck Chauvel. Using Microservices to Customize Multi-Tenant SaaS: From Intrusive to Non-Intrusive. In Joint Post-proceedings of the First and Second International Conference on Microservices (Microservices 2017/2019). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 78, pp. 1:1-1:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)
https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.Microservices.2017-2019.1

Abstract

Customization is a widely adopted practice on enterprise software applications such as Enterprise resource planning (ERP) or Customer relation management (CRM). Software vendors deploy their enterprise software product on the premises of a customer, which is then often customized for different specific needs of the customer. When enterprise applications are moving to the cloud as mutli-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), the traditional way of on-premises customization faces new challenges because a customer no longer has an exclusive control to the application. To empower businesses with specific requirements on top of the shared standard SaaS, vendors need a novel approach to support the customization on the multi-tenant SaaS. In this paper, we summarize our two approaches for customizing multi-tenant SaaS using microservices: intrusive and non-intrusive. The paper clarifies the key concepts related to the problem of multi-tenant customization, and describes a design with a reference architecture and high-level principles. We also discuss the key technical challenges and the feasible solutions to implement this architecture. Our microservice-based customization solution is promising to meet the general customization requirements, and achieves a balance between isolation, assimilation and economy of scale.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Software and its engineering → Software as a service orchestration systems
  • Software and its engineering → Cloud computing
  • Applied computing → Service-oriented architectures
Keywords
  • Customization
  • Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
  • Microservices
  • Multi-tenancy
  • Cloud
  • Reference Architecture

Metrics

  • Access Statistics
  • Total Accesses (updated on a weekly basis)
    0
    PDF Downloads
    0
    Metadata Views

References

  1. Cor-Paul Bezemer and Andy Zaidman. Multi-tenant SaaS applications: maintenance dream or nightmare? In Proceedings of the Joint ERCIM Workshop on Software Evolution (EVOL) and International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution (IWPSE), pages 88-92. ACM, 2010. Google Scholar
  2. Franck Chauvel and Arnor Solberg. Using Intrusive Microservices to Enable Deep Customization of Multi-tenant SaaS. In 2018 11th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC), pages 30-37, September 2018. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/QUATIC.2018.00015.
  3. Denise Ganly, Andy Kyte, Nigel Rayner, and Carol Hardcastle. The Rise of the Postmodern ERP and Enterprise Applications World. Gartner Report ID: G00259076, April 2018. URL: https://www.gartner.com/doc/2633315?ref=mrktg-srch.
  4. Chang Jie Guo, Wei Sun, Ying Huang, Zhi Hu Wang, and Bo Gao. A framework for native multi-tenancy application development and management. In e-commerce Technology and the 4th IEEE International Conference on Enterprise Computing, e-commerce, and E-Services, 2007. CEC/EEE 2007. The 9th IEEE International Conference on, pages 551-558. IEEE, 2007. Google Scholar
  5. Svein Hallsteinsen, Mike Hinchey, Sooyong Park, and Klaus Schmid. Dynamic software product lines. Computer, 41(4), 2008. Google Scholar
  6. IDG. 2018 Cloud Computing Survey, April 2018. URL: https://www.idg.com/tools-for-marketers/2018-cloud-computing-survey/.
  7. Cindy Jutras. Cloud Financials: Having It Your Way, White paper from AICPA. URL: https://online.intacct.com/WebsiteAssets_wp_mintjutras_cloud_financials_your_way.html.
  8. Gregor Kiczales, John Lamping, Anurag Mendhekar, Chris Maeda, Cristina Lopes, Jean-Marc Loingtier, and John Irwin. Aspect-oriented programming. In European conference on object-oriented programming, pages 220-242. Springer, 1997. Google Scholar
  9. Thomas Kwok and Ajay Mohindra. Resource calculations with constraints, and placement of tenants and instances for multi-tenant SaaS applications. In International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing, pages 633-648. Springer, 2008. Google Scholar
  10. Jaejoon Lee and Gerald Kotonya. Combining service-orientation with product line engineering. IEEE software, 27(3):35-41, 2010. Google Scholar
  11. Microsoft. eShopOnContainers - Microservices Architecture and Containers based Reference Application. URL: https://github.com/dotnet-architecture/eShopOnContainers.
  12. Microsoft. MusicStore test application that uses ASP.NET/EF Core. URL: https://github.com/aspnet/MusicStore.
  13. Ralph Mietzner and Frank Leymann. Generation of BPEL customization processes for SaaS applications from variability descriptors. In Services Computing, 2008. SCC'08. IEEE International Conference on, volume 2, pages 359-366. IEEE, 2008. Google Scholar
  14. Phu H. Nguyen, Hui Song, Franck Chauvel, and Erik Levin. Towards customizing multi-tenant Cloud applications using non-intrusive microservices. The 2nd International Conference on Microservices, Dortmund, 2019. Google Scholar
  15. Phu H. Nguyen, Hui Song, Franck Chauvel, Roy Muller, Seref Boyar, and Erik Levin. Using Microservices for Non-intrusive Customization of Multi-tenant SaaS. In Proceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, ESEC/FSE 2019, pages 905-915, New York, NY, USA, 2019. ACM. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3338906.3340452.
  16. Tuan Nguyen, Alan Colman, and Jun Han. Enabling the delivery of customizable web services. In Web Services (ICWS), 2012 IEEE 19th International Conference on, pages 138-145. IEEE, 2012. Google Scholar
  17. Oracle. Applicaiton Development SuiteScript. URL: http://www.netsuite.com/portal/platform/developer/suitescript.shtml.
  18. Klaus Pohl, Günter Böckle, and Frank J van Der Linden. Software product line engineering: foundations, principles and techniques. Springer Science &Business Media, 2005. Google Scholar
  19. Chris Richardson. Microservices patterns, 2018. Google Scholar
  20. Marcus A Rothenberger and Mark Srite. An investigation of customization in ERP system implementations. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 56(4):663-676, 2009. Google Scholar
  21. Salesforce. Apex Developer Guide. URL: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/.
  22. Hui Song, Franck Chauvel, and Arnor Solberg. Deep customization of multi-tenant SaaS using intrusive microservices. In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: New Ideas and Emerging Results, pages 97-100. ACM, 2018. Google Scholar
  23. Hui Song, Phu H. Nguyen, Franck Chauvel, Jens Glattetre, and Thomas Schjerpen. Customizing Multi-Tenant SaaS by Microservices: A Reference Architecture. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS), pages 446-448, July 2019. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICWS.2019.00081.
  24. Wei-Tek Tsai and Xin Sun. SaaS multi-tenant application customization. In Service Oriented System Engineering (SOSE), 2013 IEEE 7th International Symposium on, pages 1-12, 2013. Google Scholar
  25. Stefan Walraven, Eddy Truyen, and Wouter Joosen. A middleware layer for flexible and cost-efficient multi-tenant applications. In Proceedings of the 12th International Middleware Conference, pages 360-379. International Federation for Information Processing, 2011. Google Scholar
  26. Stefan Walraven, Dimitri Van Landuyt, Eddy Truyen, Koen Handekyn, and Wouter Joosen. Efficient customization of multi-tenant software-as-a-service applications with service lines. Journal of Systems and Software, 91:48-62, 2014. Google Scholar
Questions / Remarks / Feedback
X

Feedback for Dagstuhl Publishing


Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail
© 2023-2024 Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH Imprint Privacy Contact