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We get to hear cloud based computing a lot these days.

I just wanted to understand the basic difference between a web app and one which uses cloud based (SAAS model as they also say) It is said that the cloud means hosting the application at a common place for all the users, instead of one per user. But I find it confusing since a normal web app also does the same. So what is the difference ?

copenndthagen
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Although many times SaaS might sound similar to webhosting , they are different in the following aspects :

  • SaaS application access is frequently sold using a subscription
    model, with customers paying an ongoing fee to use the application.

- The SaaS provider hosts the application and data centrally—deploying patches and upgrades to the application transparently, and delivering access to end users over the Internet through a browser or smart-client application

  • And of course the main difference being multitenancy where the
    application layer and sometimes the application itself is different for each tenant based on the varying levels of tenancy

4 multitenant models cutting across three layers.

Aish-Rad
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  • Thx a lot...so can u elaborate on the tenant part? Do they share the instances OR it depends on the config ? – copenndthagen Aug 23 '13 at 09:37
  • The Tenant part in levels one and two are different instances. So you are basically either re writing the application twice or running seperate instances of the same application in the Server with different configuration. – Aish-Rad Aug 30 '13 at 00:43
  • So can I say that Netflix is an example of SaaS? – Aamir Jamal Jul 10 '19 at 15:46
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The Tenant part in levels one and two are different instances. So you are basically either re writing the application twice or running seperate instances of the same application in the Server with different configuration.

However in the case of the Level 3 and 4 , you run the same application instance which caters for different tenants.

Eg: You have gTalk, the way gTalk appears to you is differently configured for your style than mine. However this is done using One instance of the application. In Java terms, by one instance of an application i mean one WAR file deployed on the server, but serves differently for different tenants.

Aish-Rad
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