Engineering

Definition of Multi-tenancy

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Multi-tenancy was a relatively new concept back in 2010 when I was writing the dissertation report for my MS. This extract from the report aims at providing a clear understanding.

Multi-tenancy is an architectural pattern in which a single instance of the software is run on the service provider’s infrastructure, and multiple customers, or tenants, access the same instance. It is an organizational approach for SaaS applications today. SaaS-based software providers are believed to have evolved from Application Service Providers (ASPs) from the previous decade, which differ from today’s multi-tenant applications which are provided via a software-on-demand model specifically designed for SaaS distribution. Although the interest in this concept is rapidly growing since its inception in 2005, research is relatively slow.

Key aspects of multi-tenancy

  • The ability to share & optimize the use of hardware resources
  • The ability to offer of a high degree of configurability
  • The architecture to support the use of a single application and database instance to serve all tenants
  • Cost benefits from economy of scale & improved utilization
  • Ease of deploying a single instance
  • Simpler management
  • More frequent releases with bug-resolutions & new features
  • All customers are upgraded at once
  • Reduced operational costs
  • Easier to scale-up with the advent of cloud computing

Benefits of multi-tenancy

Human Capital

May Day! Confused comparing job offers?

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Mangoes. Yippie!

Today my dad bought the first set of mangoes this season. If asked to relate a couple of things to May, my answer would be mangoes, and ever since I started working: appraisals & attrition. While material – screenshot showing the baseline version on tissue – dates back to 2009, this post has remained queued for several months. Just like mangoes taste best in May, a post on choosing jobs has to wait for its own season to deliver maximum value. With appraisals around the corner and attrition already kicking-in, I thought this could help those switching to resolve their dilemma between their current job and offers in hand!

Baseline version on tissue

Just to set the expectations right, this is a simple decision matrix that allows you to weigh options against a few well-defined criteria.

Download Now! (Free)

I know huge links like that could seem fishy, but this one is clean. It might just make more sense to those employed in India. HR folks, if you’re downloading – this is how we look at an offer!

Here a couple of other things that could help you take the right decision Continue reading May Day! Confused comparing job offers? →

Travel

Singapore: 5 years later

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I traveled international from Mumbai airport after a couple of years, and the change was more than pleasing. While work is still on, the infrastructure plan is magnanimous and state-of-the-art, and air traffic is comparable to any major hub. I could see a long trail of blinking lights in the moon light and there no longer seems to be a hold position at the end of the run-way. It was a good flight on Singapore Airlines, although the much-hyped Singapore Sling was a bit disappointing. Dixit Jasani, Vaibhav Pani and I were on a business trip. Dixit had been to Singapore just a month back. Vaibhav’s epic moment was to set foot in a foreign country. Mine was to catch a glimpse of the A380.

Crab fritters & more

Without family, I had an option of trying some local food. Vaibhav and I tried some Indonesian-Chinese noodles, Chinese crab fritter and Indonesian fish cake. Honestly, it wasn’t until a glass of Milo that I started feeling better again. My mom would never agree to $1 chocolate drink when she could add 7 spoons of Milo to half a liter milk and make enough drink for the entire family. But honestly, that is how we all think. Fortunately on this trip, I did less of multiplication & more of subtraction when spending – if you know what I mean. I’m sure I’ll forget the math altogether when I start earning in a stronger currency.

At Marina Bay

Singapore is more like what it was in 2006; Mustafa got bigger & better and Marina Bay looks better with the Singapore Flyer and Marina Sands hotel in the background. It was good to meet a couple of old friends: Pritish Purohit & Ashish Singh. After a good breakfast at the hotel with samosas, what was supposed to be a 1.5 hour part on my side at the meeting, went on close to 5 hours, and I was involved right until the end. It was great to receive a very different kind of compliment from an attendee: “thank you, you enlightened me about P2P”. That’s precious!

On the way back, moments into the air, I had the epic moment of my life: I caught a glimpse of a Qantas A380. Krisworld, SQ’s inflight entertainment system, introduced me to ‘Come fly with me’, one of the most hilarious parodies I’ve ever seen; unfortunately, this mocked one of old favorites – Airport on  BBC. I would still say that the food is better on Air India. As usual, I couldn’t sleep on board – there’s nothing like getting back home!

Code

Something for your empty home

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Here are few lines of code that I have repeatedly found useful, especially when moving home between different web hosts.

Print the complete address of the page from where it is hosted:

<?php
$pageURL = $_SERVER[‘HTTPS’] == ‘on’ ? ‘https://’ : ‘http://’;
$pageURL .= $_SERVER[‘SERVER_PORT’] != ’80’ ? $_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”].”:”.$_SERVER[“SERVER_PORT”].$_SERVER[“REQUEST_URI”] : $_SERVER[‘SERVER_NAME’] . $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’];
echo $pageURL;
?>

Everyone knows about phpInfo – a dump of all the PHP settings:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

When using a shared host that allows overriding your PHP ini file, it is worth while knowing the path from where the file is loaded:

<?php var_dump( get_cfg_var(‘cfg_file_path’) ); ?>

Family

Remembering Aajoba

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I couldn’t have found a better day & subject to resume blogging than recall memories on the birthday of my beloved grandpa – Late Shri Madhukar Bhaskar Gupte – who very unfortunately passed away on January 22 this year. His loss wasn’t limited to his progeny, but people far and wide in his friend & family circle who had fond memories of him.

Born 29th March, 1931 at Murud-Janjira, he was the 3rd child of the late Shri Bhaskar Govind Gupte. Bhaskar bhai as he was known to most people in Murud was a very successful lawyer of his time, with stories of his arguments in court cases, as well as during prohibition still recited in the family. Of the siblings who survived adulthood (several passed away before teenage), Aajoba was #3 after his elder sister Sulochana (later Mrs. Chaubal), elder brother late Shri. Vinayak Gupte (a.k.a. Bal or Vinu who passed early 90s), and followed by two younger brothers: Shri Sudhakar (a.k.a. Appa or Sudha) & Shri Srinivas (a.k.a Baba). Only Bal ajooba had passed away before his death.

Aaji-Aajoba's Marriage (1956)

Aajoba attended Sir S A High School in Murud, and moved to Mumbai after matriculation to study law at Ruia College, Matunga. At the time, he lived with his elder sister’s family and shared a very strong bond with her children Mohan & Pratibha, who fondly called him Nana mama. We’ve heard stories of  Aajoba carrying Mohan kaka Continue reading Remembering Aajoba →

Finance & Accounting

Jargon: Consumer P&L

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Consumer P&L is an analysis of the profit and loss from individual consumers/customers or a segment, for products & services they avail. This is extremely important, at least in the software business, because when you sell an additional CD or host another tenant, it does not affect your input cost, but it definitely adds to overheads such like the billing & support functions. So when undercutting prices and compromising on margins, one should note that these costs will continue to add up, even though infrastructure, RnD & production costs hold level. This is still possible if the business model & product packaging is well thought of – that is if you have something special for the  super consumers.

I first bumped into this idea when reading Eddie Yoon’s article title Why Verizon’s iPhone Could Be Good for AT&T where he highlighted the need to focus on loyal, super consumers who make a considerable impact on your bottom line rather the divas & deal chasers.

Life & People, Thoughts & Opinions

Theme for 2012: Unf*#k your mind

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Last year I began drafting a theme for the year 2011. I called it ‘Being my own superhero‘. Although I did work on those lines and achieve quite a bit, the post remained a draft all year. Here’s a snippet:

I really can’t make sense of what’s going on in life. Sometimes I feel I’m being overly optimistic about things – like the sole warrior fighting all odds. Are will & determination enough to survive tough times? Can & should one person bring about change in so many people? make them realize things? help them think right? I really don’t know. But I’m going to try. Because if I don’t, someday I might curse myself for having lost a chance to make things better for myself & those around. So I’m taking this chance to be a super-hero – my own super-hero. That’s the theme for 2011. And I will try to have one each new year to set a direction to life. Cheers!

This year I thought I’ll publish it in time. But before everything else, here’s wishing you & your family a very happy, prosperous & healthy new year. But here’s what is going to really make it a ‘new year’:

Its New Year. Welcome it with a new vision, ambition & persona. Stop worrying about things that don’t matter. Respect & love people selflessly. Don’t do things that make you feel sorry. Then its a Happy New Year! Cheers

And continuing on those lines, this year’s theme is: Unf*#k your mind. Everyday I meet sane people who are bogged by the pressure exerted on them by those people around Continue reading Theme for 2012: Unf*#k your mind →

In the News

Not Kolaveri Di after hearing it

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I have been seeing updates on Facebook about this new song called ‘Kolaveri Di‘ . Initially I thought it was another aspiring artist like Wilbur Sargunaraj (whos branding & success can be a case study for creative agencies). Since it was Rajnikanth’s son-in-law Dhanush, it surely demanded some respect. Meaning killer or murderous rage in Tamil, also referred to as the Soup Song, it has gone viral on social networks. A Tamil friend of mine played the song to my ears today, and since then I’m hung on it. Posting the lyrics below for your reference 😉

Lyrics:

yo boys i am singing song
soup song
flop song
why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di
why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di
rhythm correct
why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di
maintain this
why this kolaveri..di Continue reading Not Kolaveri Di after hearing it →

In the News

And we’re back, for the global common good

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The theme for my life over the last year or so has been ‘change without choice’. Things & people, out of my control, are forcing a change in my life – all for good. A fortnight back my web account was locked for some abusive script – probably my Facebook app that was looping indefinitely. Other ‘happening’ things spared little time to fix my blog. Last week, I recovered the data, massaged it to match the WP3.0 structure and got a new setup running on a new host – took around 10 hours in toto. Please help by sharing bugs & performance issues.

I’m writing after a couple a months and, as always, a lot has happened since. In my post ‘The not so ‘Shiney’ future of men‘ based on the Shiney Ahuja rape case, I had mentioned that apart from strong opposition, we need to have a non-tolerant attitude towards offenders. But the recent Kenan-Reuben murders are a gory, discouraging result of such opposition. Its a shame on part of law & enforcement, Continue reading And we’re back, for the global common good →

Economy, In the News

Mumbai traffic, the continuity equation & polictical will

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Mumbai has given me my friends, education, bread, happiness & sorrow – I love it. But with that it has given us traffic & pollution – 2 things unavoidable in this city. Despite of the patient Gaurav Samant driving me to work on that crazy JVLR, both of those rankle me everyday. But over the last couple of months, I’ve come to conclude that the traffic problem in Mumbai is a mere flow-rate issue. I might have lost touch with the intricacies of fluid dynamics, but the flow rate concept is simple enough to recollect & apply here. Wider roads have more cars flowing per second (wider area allows high velocity, hence higher flow rate). And its exactly the opposite on narrower roads. When 2 roads come together to form a road narrower than the sum of their widths, theoretically cars would have to go faster to keep the flow-rate constant. But I wish Mumbai roads allowed this. Such joints are usually where traffic clogs due to damaged roads & lack of driving sense.

The first problem is that these devastated intersections are “No Contractor’s Land”. Continue reading Mumbai traffic, the continuity equation & polictical will →