What is multi-tenant?

Multi-tenant explained

In a multi-tenant platform, one version of the software runs for all customers. Each customer, a tenant, has its own users, settings and data, and sees nothing of the others. The opposite is single-tenant, where each customer has its own installation.

The advantage is that updates and security improvements reach everyone at the same time and management is more efficient. The flip side is that separation between tenants must be watertight: every database query and every view must know which organisation it belongs to.

With a multi-tenant platform, ask how that separation works, where your organisation's data is stored and whether secrets such as passwords and keys are isolated per tenant.

Example

Acme Groothandel and another wholesaler use the same portal platform. Each has its own portal with its own branding, its own users and its own data warehouse, and an Acme employee cannot see or query anything belonging to the other organisation.