What is the concept of "multi-tenancy" in service environments?

The concept of "multi-tenancy" refers to a software architecture where a single instance of an application serves multiple clients, often referred to as tenants. Each tenant shares the same application resources and infrastructure, while maintaining their own separate data and configuration settings. This allows for efficient resource utilization, as the service provider can deliver the application to many clients without needing to deploy separate instances for each one.

In this model, the tenants are logically isolated from each other, ensuring that data privacy and security are upheld. This approach not only reduces operational costs but also simplifies upgrades and maintenance since updates made to the single application instance benefit all tenants simultaneously.

Other choices do not accurately describe multi-tenancy. While encouraging multiple users to access different software instances could be related to software distribution, it does not encapsulate the core principle of sharing a single application instance. Similarly, a configuration where multiple instances of software run in isolation aligns more with a traditional multi-instance architecture rather than multi-tenancy, which emphasizes shared resources. Lastly, requiring each tenant to maintain their own server contradicts the fundamental concept of multi-tenancy, which aims to reduce resource overhead by using shared infrastructure.