Multi-Tenancy in SaaS:
The Business Case
Presented at SaaS University, Chicago, IL
July 1, 2009

Introduction
Lincoln Murphy, Founder & Managing Director
Sixteen Ventures
15+ Years On- Started and Sold
Demand Product F1000-targeted
Development SaaS Company
I help SaaS
SaaS Business
Vendors make
Architect
more money!
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Why are you a
SaaS Vendor?
So you can take
So you can sell on compliance
cheap software? support for your
clients?
Because you want to
There has to be
manage client
infrastructure? more, right?
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

What SaaS Is Not
Pricing Model Revenue Model
Anything on the
Software Delivery
Web, in the cloud,
Method
etc.
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

What SaaS Is
Business Commercially
Architecture focused
Inherently Single-Instance,
Social Multi-Tenant
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Multi-Tenancy Defined
End-users Share Single-Instance
Everything for all clients
(Infra, DB & Code) (Production)
Implementation
Agnostic
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Multi-Tenancy Benefits
Resource
Economies of Scale
Efficiency
Five lesser known
benefits
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Multi-Tenancy Benefits
Improve Strategic Planning Abilities
Reduce Sales Cycles & Accelerate Revenue
Improve Customer Service & Retention
Gain & Maintain Competitive Advantage
Maximize Revenue through Direct Monetization
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Aggregate Data
Must be built into
Unprecedented
the
Visibility
product early
Fix your Terms of Anonymize when
Service / Visit used outside your
Legal Team organization
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Types of Data
Usage Meta
User
Generated
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Improve Strategic
Planning Abilities
Get “feedback” Be better prepared
without asking users when you do client
directly interviews
Align Product Build what the
Development users want; know
Roadmap to Users what they do
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Reduce Sales Cycles &
Accelerate Revenue
Lower Customer Reach Profitable
Acquisition Costs Revenue Faster
Overcome Upsell based on
Common other users’
Objections behavior
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Improve Customer
Service & Retention
Improve
Reduce Churn Customer Lifetime
Value
Provide Proactive Know why users
Support churn out
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Gain & Maintain
Competitive Advantage
Extrapolate User
Segment behavior by
Behavior to the
vertical
Greater Market
Build what the Become a catalyst,
market tells you it channel, or social
wants network
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Maximize Revenue through
Direct Monetization
Anonymized Industry, Users, even
Aggregate Competitors want
Information this
Potentially more
Benchmarks &
valuable than the app
Reports itself
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Implementing Multi-Tenancy in
SaaS
Team must be
Strategic Product
versed in SaaS
Development
techniques
Multi-Tenancy is
KPIs, dashboards,
simple; taking full
advantage is tricky BI tools, etc.
http://sciodev.com
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

Methods and Concepts are good, but
lets apply this to your business and
experiences...
Q&A
Copyright© 2009 Lincoln Murphy / Sixteen Ventures. All Rights Reserved.

SaaS Business
Architecture
Consultants
lincoln@sixteenventures.com
http://sixteenventures.com
http://twitter.com/lincolnmurphy
http://linkedin.com/in/lincolnmurphy
lincolnmurphy (972) 200-9317