The yX Side

“single instance, multi-tenancy is still a black art that only selected few have been able to master”

Esse post é rápido… mas é interessante.

Em SaaS is a journey, walk with us, Fred Chong (Arquiteto da Microsoft) indica o que seria interessante ter em um livro sobre SaaS. O melhor é que ele e seu amigo Gianpolo começaram a jornada produzir este livro. Então aí vai…

Sumário:

1. Introduction

* Definitions
* Differences from traditional ASP model
* SaaS value proposition
* Realizing SaaS = business model + application architecture + operation structure

2. Business Model

* Revenue and licensing model
o Additional services revenue: configuration and customization
* Sales compensation model
* Types of software services
* Designing SaaS SLA and contracts

3. Application Architecture Overview

* Instancing and multi-tenancy
* Comparisons of application architecture: on-premise, ASP, SaaS
* SaaS maturity model
* SaaS application architecture issues: identity, data, workflow, messaging, design for manageability, service-orientation, scaling, tenancy, meta-data, service consumption etc.
* Overview of SaaS capabilities and enablement architecture

4. Scaling 101

* Pools: thread, connections etc.
* Async
* Locks
* States
* UI/Presentation

5. Data Management

* Partitioning for scaling and performance
o Data partitioning schemes: Spatial, temporal, hashing etc., SQL Server 2005 support for data partitioning
o Data distribution patterns and functions
o Dynamic partitioning: re-partitioning growing database
* Data availability
o Replication strategy

6. Tenant Management

* Data model for tenant management
* Subscription Management
* Identity management
o Models
*

Delegated administration
*

Identity federation
*

Hybrid: e.g. federation for tenants and delegated admin for tenants’ customers.

7. Tenant Customization

* Meta data service for customization
* Approaches for extending application data model
* Approaches for UI customization
* Approaches for business process customization
* SaaS and system integrations modes:
o In house systems to SaaS integration (main app is in house)
o SaaS to in house systems integration (SaaS is the main app)
o SaaS with partial SaaS solution hosted on premise
o SaaS to SaaS integration

+ Direct
+ Hub-and-spoke through SaaS integration platform (like Salesforce’s AppForce)

8. Application and Data Security

* Common authentication schemes: username/pwd, certificates
* Application single sign-on
* Securing data transfer
o Application security session
o Session data integrity and privacy
o Transport vs. application level security
* Authorization
o Schemes: ACL, RBAC, business rules
o Policy management: distributed/resource, centralized
* Application security abstractions:
o Tokens, claims, security token services, security policies
* Trusted sub-system model for securing application tiers
* Identity context propagation
* Secret/key management: for application and tenants
* Data isolation schemes

o Database access control: RBAC, views etc.
o Partitioning:
+ Logical: tables, databases
+ Physical: disks
o Database encryption

9. Programmable Software Services

* Software service lifecycle
* Service versioning
* Service certification, registration and publication
* Software service registry
o Requirements
o Architecture

10. Programmable Software Service Consumption

* Function vs. data oriented services (web service vs. RSS vs. REST etc)
* Composite applications
* Tools and community framework

11. Instrumentation and Monitoring

* Types, goals and audience of instrumentation: infrastructure, application stack, business logic
* Instrumentation constructs: counters, events, rules, threshold, alerts
* Health monitoring
* Availability monitoring
* Business performance monitoring

12. Configuration Management

* Change management requirements
* Configuration management architecture

13. Metering

* Usage models
* Data model for each metering
* Usage tracking architecture

14. Infrastructure Security

* Network and firewall design
* Intrusion detection
* Protecting against viruses and worms
* Protecting against denial of service attacks

15. Operation Structure

* Provisioning
o Infrastructure
o Application
o Tenants
* Disaster recovery
* Billing
* Network operation center
* Call center

Appendix

* SaaS enablement roadmap: from on-premise and ASP to SaaS
o Scenarios and SaaS enablement strategy
* Enabling SaaS to on-premise solution migration
o Deploy existing SaaS solution and subscription to on-premise
o Need to de-mingle data to be hosted on-premise