One Solution to Improve the Confidentiality of Customer's Private Business Data in SaaS Model

Abstract

One common feature in SaaS (Software as a Service) business model is that the customer's private business data is hosted by the service provider. This causes a problem to SMB (Small and Medium Business) consumers: it is hard to guarantee the confidentiality of theirs private business data. This paper presents a solution to this problem: the customer's private business data are stored and protected in SMB side, and the business data is guaranteed visible only to the customer itself. Smart MSBG (Multi-Service Business Gateway) is introduced in this paper. Smart MSBG and Service Management Center are two main components to implement the service management. Every SMB customer hosts one Smart MSBG. The Smart MSBG is used to store the SMB customer private business data at customer side. The Management Center is used to manage all Smart MSBGs at service provider side. Service management operations including service subscription, service delivery, and service upgrade, service availability management can be performed through the coordination between Management Center and Smart MSBG. In this paper, we first studied the problem in current SaaS business model, and then we presented the architecture of our solution and test bed. We also described the structure of Management Center and Smart MSBG, as well as how they work together in typical service management scenarios.