SaaS Factory (The Series) — How to Build Software as a Service Solutions on AWS

I have been involved in a number of projects guiding software factories and developers on how to build software as a service solutions on AWS. It is a huge challenge: beyond driving the development of the new product, it is fundamental — I would say essential — to understand how the new will live alongside the legacy. More than that: how to make sure the development process of the new product leads not to competing or redundant efforts, but to coexistence.

When we look at SaaS best practices, it is always a big challenge to pin down what is a SaaS best practice and what is simply a general best practice in software engineering and architecture. The truth is that many SaaS best practices are more an overlap and convergence of practices than the application of any single one. On top of that, the multi-tenant context (multitenancy) adds even more complexity.

To help with this, AWS created the SaaS Enablement Framework. It is divided into a series of distinct topics that should be taken into account when building, managing and delivering a SaaS solution on AWS.

SaaS Enablement Framework: The Cornerstone

_The software as a service (SaaS) delivery model presents developers with a series of challenges, establishing a new landscape of technical, operational and deployment considerations for these products. Adopting a SaaS profile often means rethinking the fundamentals of the entire business, not only from a technical perspective but also from an organizational one. To support organizations on this path toward a software as a service model, AWS developed the SaaS Enablement Framework. Its goal is to provide a roadmap for developing, operating and launching SaaS offerings on AWS. By classifying SaaS best practices and design trade-offs, it becomes possible to provide catalysts for the SaaS community._

But What Is SaaS Factory, Anyway?

The SaaS Factory program was developed by AWS to help its technology partners in the AWS Partner Network (APN), at any stage of the journey of building a software product, do so in a software as a service (SaaS) context. The program lets you create new products, migrate single-tenant environments, or optimize existing SaaS solutions on AWS.

SaaS Factory — The Series

The goal of this series of posts is to present the different disciplines involved in building software as a service on AWS, using what the SaaS Factory program and the SaaS Enablement Framework lay out as the overall structure. We will analyze the perspectives they present, seeking to put into context all the practices needed to enable a software as a service product. To that end, we will cover:

Introduction

• Understanding the SaaS Factory Architecture (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4);

Business Practices

• SaaS 3.0: Building and Optimizing a Modern SaaS Company (Part 1 and Part 2);

Tenant Isolation

• Tenant Isolation Architectures in SaaS (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3);

Data Partitioning

• Storage Strategies in SaaS (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3);

Identity and Access

• The Secrets of Identity and Access Control in SaaS;

Profiling and Optimization

• Optimizing SaaS Tenant Costs and Workflows;

Migration

• SaaS Architecture Migration Strategies;

Billing and Metering

• Calculating Tenant Costs in SaaS Environments.

By the end of our series, we hope you will be able to start your SaaS journey with expert guidance and best practices based on years of experience at AWS and feedback from partners who have already worked with the AWS SaaS Factory team.

See you in the next post!