Multitenancy in public cloud computing

This is similar to the way many public cloud providers implement multi-tenancy. Most cloud providers define multitenancy as a shared software instance. They store metadata* about each tenant and use this data to alter the software instance at runtime to fit each tenant's needs. The tenants are isolated from each other via permissions. Even though they all share the same software instance, they each use and experience the software differently.

Multitenancy in private cloud computing

Private cloud computing uses multitenant architecture in much the same way that public cloud computing does. The difference is that the other tenants are not from external organizations. In public cloud computing, Company A shares infrastructure with Company B. In private cloud computing, different teams within Company A shared infrastructure with each other.

Multitenancy is often used in cloud computing, to offer shared tenancy on public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Additionally, multitenancy is a key part of another cloud model, software as a service, and so is deployed by many software as a service company.