Comments on: What if Salesforce.com weren’t multi-tenant?

By: Theodis Butler

Theodis Butler — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:05:27 +0000

There are costs with replacing disks, doing firmware upgrades/etc on servers, heating, cooling, electricity.

They would save a tremendous amount of money by moving to the cloud. The key is automation.

What about when it’s time to “upgrade” that legacy hardware?

By: Matthew Mikell

Matthew Mikell — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:52:58 +0000

Let’s give credit where credit is due. It is an easy application that was made available to the masses with speed and simplicity.

Talk to any user about their start-up and ongoing use of Saleforce.com and they’ll never say a thing about multi-tenancy. It’s about the speed to implimentation, product features and the market demand.

By: adg

adg — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:30:45 +0000

Note that Salesforce is using Oracle databases. –> Big cost!

By: Sinclair Schuller

Sinclair Schuller — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:13:09 +0000

Atul, excellent point. Depending on your needs, you may even be paying for OS licenses (Windows). This adds up fast.

By: Atul Kumar

Atul Kumar — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:08:57 +0000

A big part of SaaS cost is Database lic.. In VM DB layer (if you dare!), you will require 1 lic/VM image or upgrade to enterprise versions depending on the DB used. And that’s why multi-tenancy will still rule.. VM the DB layer is a bad idea anyway..

By: Sinclair Schuller

Sinclair Schuller — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:08:27 +0000

Thanks for comment, Bob.

As for “…the cost to run all the virtualized servers in terms of people would be much higher than their non-hardware costs are today for multitenant.”

I speculated as much, but didn’t want to comment on it. I know you have lots of experience here, so I appreciate the value you’ve added to the discussion. It really goes to show how quickly a couple of pennies per hour here and there add up!

By: Bob Warfield

Bob Warfield — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:51:35 +0000

Love the analysis of “backing out” multitenancy!

Salesforce are one of the most efficient operators out there, and it is a huge advantage for them. They spend every penny of the multitenant savings in other ways.

BTW, I am entirely confident that the cost to run all the virtualized servers in terms of people would be much higher than their non-hardware costs are today for multitenant.

Cheers,