Many Application Service Provider (ASP) offer either the Classic Hosted Model or the new Multi-Tenant Architecture (MTA).
Examples of the Classic Model are companies like Oracle who claim that the advantage is to allow unique and more extensive customizations. Proponents of a Multi Tenant Architecture are companies like SalesForce reaping the benefits of the "one instance" low overhead. For both options, the ASP is responsible for operations - but when it comes to upgrades to new versions, the classic hosted model requires the same effort as on-premise implementations.
The biggest advantage of a MTA for a user is that there is little maintenance effort on the user side - as version upgrades are supposed to have no impact on the use of the application.
How does Compiere stack up? Compiere fully supports both options and even supports traditional on-premise implementations - with the ease of operation & maintenance advantages of a Multi-Tenant Architecture.
The MTA approach is limited to support "planned" customizations (i.e. if a certain customization/functionality is not supported, there is no way to provide this in that environment). The main benefit of the MTA is that the cost of system maintenance can be shared by all tenants/users - resulting in dramatically reduced costs.
Compiere offers significantly more flexibility as e.g. Salesforce to customize the system for the individual tenant. MTA is not for everyone. Some companies require significant customizations and extensions - or may have very different usage profiles (to optimize performance) and require specific maintenance schedules. With Compiere, the overhead of hosting multiple completely independent tenants is very low. Compiere just requires an additional database user for an independent tenant.
Other concerns of a MTA environment are security limitations and are often restricted to the reporting tools provided. In Compiere, you can actually offer SQL access restricted to the information of the specific tenant. One consideration here is that you need to replicate all application security rules in the reporting solution, which is a significant overhead and security risk - but if required, you at least have this option with Compiere.
One motivation to run the application on-premise is if you have many interfaces, especially to scanning, shop floor or dedicated POS systems. Compiere offers here the ease-of-operation as for MTA hosted solutions with it's revolutionary version-migration technology. In addition, Compiere was designed to be fully customized and extended - making the upgrade to the current product version a matter of hours.
In summary, with Compiere customers and ASPs may chose the optimal environment - from MTA to Classical Hosting to On-Premise solution with remote monitoring and maintenance. No restrictions.
