Glossary
Multi-tenancy
An architecture where one application instance serves many customers, with data logically separated per tenant.
Multi-tenancy is efficient: one deployment, one upgrade, shared infrastructure cost. Isolation is enforced in software through tenant identifiers on every record and query.
The trade-offs appear in enterprise procurement. Shared infrastructure, shared upgrade timing and shared blast radius are often objections in regulated security reviews, which is why single-tenant options exist.