Defining multi-tenancy: A systematic mapping study on the academic and the industrial perspective

•We analyzed the academic and industrial perspective on multi-tenancy.•No different interpretation of multi-tenancy exists between academia and industry.•A different interpretation of multi-tenancy exists within academia and industry.•We provide an overall definition for the concept of multi-tenancy.•We provide seven future research themes for multi-tenancy.

Software as a service is frequently offered in a multi-tenant style, where customers of the application and their end-users share resources such as software and hardware among all users, without necessarily sharing data. It is surprising that, with such a popular paradigm, little agreement exists with regard to the definition, domain, and challenges of multi-tenancy. This absence is detrimental to the research community and the industry, as it hampers progress in the domain of multi-tenancy and enables organizations and academics to wield their own definitions to further their commercial or research agendas.In this article, a systematic mapping study on multi-tenancy is described in which 761 academic papers and 371 industrial blogs are analysed. Both the industrial and academic perspective are assessed, in order to get a complete overview. The definition and topic maps provide a comprehensive overview of the domain, while the research agenda, listing four important research topics, provides a roadmap for future research efforts.