Growth
Every organization is about growth. However, SaaS organizations typically have a different notion of growth. They are investing in a model and an organizational footprint that is built to thrive on growth. Imagine building this highly efficient car factory that optimized and automated every step in the construction process. Then, imagine only asking it to produce two cars a day. Sort of pointless. With SaaS, we’re building out a business footprint that streamlines the entire process of acquiring, onboarding, supporting, and managing customers. A SaaS company makes this investment with the expectation that it will help support and fuel the growth machine that ultimately influences the margins and broader success of the business. So, when we talk about growth here, we’re talking about achieving a level of acceleration that couldn’t be achieved without the agility, operational efficiency, and innovation that ‘s part of SaaS. How much growth you’re talking here is relative. For some, growth may be adding 100 new customers and for others it could mean adding 50,000 new customers. While this nature of your scale may vary, the goal of being growth-focused is equally essential to all SaaS businesses.
The items outlined here represent some of the core SaaS business principles. These are concepts that should be driven from the top down in a SaaS company where the leadership places clear emphasis on driving a business strategy that is focused on creating growth through investment in these agility, operational efficiency, and growth goals.
Certainly, technology will end up playing a key role in this business strategy. The difference here is that SaaS is not a technology first mindset. A SaaS architect doesn’t design a multi-tenant architecture first then figure out how the business strategy layers on top of that. Instead, the business and technology work together to find the best intersection of business goals and multi-tenant strategies that will realize those strategies.
As we get further into architecture details, you’ll see this theme is laced into every dimension of our architecture. As we look at topics like tenant isolation, data partitioning, and identity, for example, you’ll see how each of these areas are directly influenced by a range of business model considerations.