Managing Client-Specific Customised Functions in Multi-Tenant Software-as-a-Service

Maintainability and easy-to-customisation are some quality properties that most application software in software-as-a-service (SaaS) should posses. These quality attributes are the pre requisite for most application software running on cloud and serving several clients with diverse requirements. It is a challenge on how to implement, manage, and monitor client-specific customisation of functions of an application software that serves multiple clients in a SaaS model offered by cloud computing. A particular application software offered by SaaS to numerous clients may need customised as well as additional functions of the same software that other clients use. This paper explores challenges related to this, and outlines how various techniques could assist cloud providers to manage, control and maintain various client-specific customisation requests related to an application software.