Single-Tenant Architecture
Our cloud-native design prevents data commingling, offers
greater security and puts you back in control of your data.
Taking Control of Your Data
Merlin is unique in offering a single-tenant architecture for its clients. What does that mean? It means that every client site sits in its own environment, protected in a VPC (virtual private cloud) and runs on separate hardware and software. It also means that client data is maintained in a separate environment with dedicated encryption keys to protect data at-rest, and to make sure client data cannot accidentally be accessed by others.
A single-tenant environment provides increased flexibility for security-sensitive applications and customizable security options. It allows us to offer a range of additional security measures including customizable control over the environment, enhanced access restrictions and special monitoring. And, perhaps most importantly, it gives us the ability to host your application anywhere in the world, including in your own Amazon secure environment.
In designing the Merlin platform, we eschewed the traditional multi-tenant architecture where one system supports multiple clients and data is commingled. Instead, each site lives in its own secure environment relying on dedicated servers for search and database functions. Documents are stored securely in dedicated S3 (storage) buckets.
Our single-tenant architecture also means we can size each site to your needs, quickly adding additional servers when needed or dropping them when not. It also gives us the ability to host our systems anywhere in the world including privately in your own secure AWS environment.
We can also offer clients a range of additional security measures including customizable control over the environment for HIPAA and GDPR compliance, enhanced access restrictions and individual monitoring.
In short, Sherlock Integrated Search was purpose-built for the AWS cloud. Knowing how important security is to our clients, we chose a single-tenant architecture that would allow us to offer a range of customizable security options for security, backup and disaster recovery.
When you move to the cloud there are important reasons to use a single tenant architecture:
- Data and documents can be secured far more effectively when they reside in a separate Virtual Private Cloud, accessible only by an individual client.
- We can quickly place individual sites anywhere in the world, including in a client’s AWS or a government FedRamp environment.
- We can customize security measures for each site in accordance with data sensitivity and client needs
- We can size matters to the needs of the case, supporting both the smallest and the largest matters, changing server numbers and capabilities with a few clicks.
- Clients can turn matters on and off at will, lowering costs when the site is not active.
Single-tenant architecture is critical in the cloud era because it allows our clients to use cloud resources the way they were meant to be used–sizing each installation to meet specific client requirements while retaining the ability to quickly increase resources when needed.
Thus, if a small matter suddenly needs to grow because of an unexpected data dump, we can quickly add servers to support the need. If our client needs to ramp up review, we can expand the site to support hundreds of users. And, drop it down once the review has ended.
Most search and review vendors who moved to the cloud simply replicated their existing data center architecture without thought to the unique capabilities of a cloud environment. We had the chance to start fresh and chose a new approach that takes advantage of the cloud.
In short, we’re using the cloud the way it was meant to be used.
Take Advantage of the Cloud
Give us a call to discuss our unique architecture and Cloud Utility Pricing.
