Multi-tenant analytics refers to an analytics platform constructed on a multi-tenant structure, which units it aside from different analytics options. Multi-tenant analytics delivers dashboards and reporting capabilities to a number of finish customers, also referred to as tenants.
On this article, we’ll clarify how multi-tenant analytics work and the way it differs from single-tenant analytics. If you need to assessment the fundamentals of multitenancy, be happy to learn our article “What Is Multitenancy?”
How Does Multi-tenant Analytics Work?
As beforehand talked about, multi-tenant analytics supplies a number of tenants with dashboards and reporting capabilities. Who precisely is a tenant?
Tenants might be:
- Customers and consumer teams exterior your organization who’re associated to your small business (e.g., resellers, brokers, franchise items, and so forth.)
- Prospects (e.g., subscribers or shopper corporations)
- Customers inside your organization (e.g., departments, world enterprise items, or single customers with particular wants)
Every tenant is given entry to a devoted area the place they’ll analyze their knowledge and look at their dashboards.
This area is designed as a securely separated container inside the analytics platform, which might maintain an indefinite variety of containers. These containers could also be referred to by completely different names: workspaces, views, or containers. On this article, we’ll consult with them as workspaces.
Whereas the workspace accommodates an information mannequin, metrics, and dashboards, it accommodates solely the information that’s particular to a given tenant. This distinction is achieved via using two forms of workspaces: the grasp workspace and little one workspace. Let’s assessment their functions and elements.
- The grasp workspace serves as a template for little one workspaces. This workspace accommodates an information mannequin, all metrics, and dashboards that may be shared with the related little one workspaces. No finish customers are given entry to the grasp workspace.
- The kid workspace is tenant-facing. It’s the area the place finish customers work with their dashboards. The kid workspace accommodates the information mannequin, core metrics, and dashboards inherited from the grasp workspace. As we talked about earlier than, every little one workspace accommodates completely different knowledge. Finish customers within the little one workspace might create their very own metrics on high of those offered by the grasp workspace and create their very own dashboards — with out affecting the grasp workspace.
This multi-tenant construction permits you to push updates from the grasp workspace to any of its little one workspaces. Moreover, it permits you to simply reuse workspaces, create copies of workspaces, and modify them to rapidly accommodate the wants of various groups, enterprise companions, or prospects.
Utilizing this construction is an environment friendly technique to create, scale, and handle standardized and agile reporting for a broad consumer base. On high of that, you too can enable finish customers to create their very own custom-made dashboards and carry out their very own knowledge and perception exploration.
This construction is particularly widespread for delivering analytics to your individual prospects or finish customers exterior your organizations (e.g., enterprise companions).
Alternatively, if you want to simply scale and handle numerous analytics use instances (e.g., departments that want essentially completely different metrics from each other), you’ll be able to arrange workspaces into segments. Every phase has one grasp workspace with one knowledge mannequin and one or many little one workspaces.
No matter which multi-tenant construction you select, finish customers from one workspace can’t entry knowledge and dashboards from one other workspace except you allow permissions for them to take action. They will solely view the metrics and dashboards which might be related to them. The way you select to outline the construction of your workspaces will depend on the distinctive wants of your organization.
Be aware: The above described multi-tenant structure resolution primarily based on workspaces outlines one of the best confirmed technique to construct sustainable multi-tenant analytics. Nevertheless, it isn’t the one possibility obtainable. To discover different structure choices, together with per-tenant silos, shared analytical databases, and extra, be happy to learn this text.
What Are the Advantages of Multi-tenant Analytics?
Now that we perceive how multi-tenant analytics works, let’s assessment its advantages.
- Value effectivity and safety: A single analytics platform is used to handle your complete consumer base, which lowers the general price and optimizes knowledge and analytics administration. With a multi-tenant construction, large-scale or mid-scale analytics options are safe, manageable, and reasonably priced.
- Scalability and administration: Analytics scaling processes are environment friendly, agile, and quick due to workspace cloning, entry provisioning, and powerful governance over the construction of workspaces. Finish customers have the flexibleness to regulate the offered dashboards or create their very own dashboards with out affecting different customers’ dashboards or the underlying knowledge, metrics, and settings. The corporate and knowledge groups are in management, whereas finish customers are effectively supplied with the information and perception they want.
Single-tenant Analytics vs. Multi-tenant Analytics
The primary distinction between single-tenant and multi-tenant analytics lies within the administration of analytics scaling. As a way to scale, you’ll want to effectively handle separated teams of customers in addition to their wants and use instances. The desk under supplies an summary of the variations between single-tenant and multi-tenant analytics.
Utilizing single-tenant analytics for multi-tenant use instances may be a dangerous method. There are two situations during which this will occur:
- Utilizing single-tenant analytics as multi-tenant analytics
- Deploying single-tenant analytics for every tenant individually
Utilizing single-tenant structure for multi-tenant analytics results in extreme safety and privateness points. Since there are not any securely separated containers within the analytics platform, there’s a excessive danger of finish customers from completely different departments or corporations affecting one another’s knowledge and dashboards. Deploying modifications to knowledge fashions and dashboards whereas sustaining management over the analytics resolution when there isn’t any consumer base and knowledge construction is an inconceivable process.
When an organization decides to deploy single-tenant analytics for every tenant individually, it wants to put in particular person workspaces of single-tenant analytics for every tenant. In comparison with the earlier state of affairs, every tenant is given privateness and might customise their analytics as they need. Nonetheless, there are drawbacks to this method:
- Deploying a brand new software program model for every tenant is dear and inefficient. It will increase prices of your complete analytics resolution and will increase the time wanted to arrange the analytics for tenants.
- Because the consumer base grows, it turns into tough to handle all of the software program variations.
- The corporate should preserve a number of software program variations.
Which Sort of Resolution Is Proper for You?
If an analytics resolution is meant to supply knowledge and dashboards to a number of teams of customers and must be managed centrally, a multi-tenant analytics platform is the higher possibility for the next causes:
- Every tenant can solely entry the information that’s related to them, which supplies privateness.
- Every tenant can customise their analytics as they need (e.g., including a emblem, altering colours, altering the type of dashboards, and so forth.).
- Every tenant acts as a separate unit, that means modifications in a single tenant’s view won’t seem in one other tenant’s view.
Alternatively, if you don’t require this type of governance, agility, and effectivity, a single-tenant analytics resolution will seemingly be a handy resolution to your use case.
Multi-tenant Analytics With GoodData
GoodData is a contemporary BI and analytics platform with a decade of expertise in multi-tenant environments. In case you are excited by studying extra about making a multi-tenant setting, go forward and examine it in our documentation, or get in touch with us immediately by requesting a demo. Our EU and U.S. groups are pleased to offer you a free GoodData platform walk-through and reply any of your questions.
