Sheena Allen

Sheena Allan is a Product Manager at Auth0, focusing on Organizations and Self-Service Enterprise Configuration products. She drives strategic planning, product roadmaps, and feature development for B2B SaaS.

Product Manager

Sheena Allan

Learn how to bridge the "Identity Wall" in B2B SaaS. Carlos Mostek shares an architectural blueprint for Enterprise SSO and robust multi-tenant data isolation.


In the premiere episode of "[What the SaaS?\!](https://auth0.com/blog/breaking-identity-wall-with-tenancy-as-a-service/)," I welcomed Sam Rosen, Senior Director of Product at Auth0, to break down a challenge we see constantly: the "Identity Wall." We talked about why so many promising B2B SaaS companies stall when their B2C identity model cannot meet the demands of enterprise buyers.

In that episode, we defined the *why*. Now, it is time to get into the *how*.

For our [second episode](https://auth0.com/resources/podcasts/what-the-saas-2), I wanted to go deeper and lay out the architectural blueprint for a scalable, enterprise-ready identity model. There was no better person to guide us through this than our own [Carlos Mostek, Product Architect for B2B at Auth0](https://auth0.com/blog/authors/carlos-mostek/). Carlos has spent years on both the solution and product architecture sides, giving him a unique view of where identity strategy meets reality.

Here’s a look at the architectural deep dive from our conversation.

## The First Cracks in the Foundation

When an application built for single users first attempts to serve business customers, the entire model gets turned on its head. As Carlos explained, the fundamental shift is that "the business itself becomes the primary entity, and the ownership moves to the org level, not the user level."

This shift immediately exposes the first cracks in the foundation. Suddenly you need:

* **Roles:** Not every user should have the same permissions. Billing managers should not be inviting members, and IT admins have no business seeing financial data.

* **Single sign-on (SSO) as table stakes:** No enterprise wants to manage hundreds of separate accounts. As Carlos put it, “If your application does not support SSO, you are a liability for enterprise IT, not a product they want to adopt. You'll lose deals over it.”

* **A new purpose for delegated admin:** Once the customer connects their own Identity Provider (IdP), your in-app admin tools are no longer for managing people. They become about *configuration* — setting up the SSO connection, mapping roles, and defining authentication policies.

## The Pain of Bolting On Data Isolation

One of the costliest mistakes I see teams make is underestimating data isolation. If your entire data model is built around a `user_id`, trying to retrofit organization-level separation is a nightmare.

“You really need to get organization IDs in your indexes from the start,” Carlos warned. “The teams that do that late usually find a dozen places where they assume ‘one user, one tenant’ and have to rethink the whole access pattern.” It is a foundational decision that, if gotten wrong, can lead to painful, expensive rewrites.

## The "Organization" as a First-Class Entity

So, what is an organization, architecturally? It is far more than just a tag on a user object.

I loved how Carlos defined it: **“An organization is a first-class entity. It has its own SSO connection, its own authentication policies, its own admin hierarchy… its own configuration that the business controls independently of everyone else on the platform.”**

The organization becomes the context that shapes every decision, from who can log in to what they can see.

## The Business Case for Leadership (and How to Get Buy-In)

Perhaps the most crucial question is how a lead engineer or architect can get buy-in for what can be a significant rebuild. Carlos’s answer was direct and powerful: **It is about revenue**.

“Enterprise contracts are larger, they are more stable, and it is harder to churn than consumer subscriptions,” he said.

The path to that revenue often starts with a single developer or team loving your product and bringing it to work. When their manager asks, “Can we get this for our whole team?” the answer must be an emphatic "Yes," complete with SSO, security controls, and self-service administration. If you are not ready, that opportunity is gone.

The argument I've seen work time and again is this: you cannot capture enterprise revenue without building for enterprise requirements. Every month your engineering team spends building identity plumbing is a month they are not building the features your customers actually pay you for.

This is just a summary of our incredible conversation. Carlos also dove into the complexities of **shared vs. isolated user models**, **the importance of** **extensibility**, and **the trade-offs of ceding control to customer IDPs**. To get the full story, I invite you to listen to [the complete episode](https://auth0.com/resources/podcasts/what-the-saas-2).

Thanks for tuning in, and thanks again to Carlos for sharing his architectural blueprint with us.

Why a Robust Organizations Model is Non-Negotiable


Learn how B2B SaaS companies can use Tenancy-as-a-Service to scale past the "Identity Wall" and meet enterprise security requirements like SAML and SCIM.

Breaking the "Identity Wall" with Tenancy-as-a-Service


eric wu

With over 7 years of experience in product marketing, I am passionate about creating and delivering impactful marketing strategies that drive customer value, business growth, and competitive differentiation. I have a strong background in launching new products, especially in Security, Generative AI and Cloud domains, where I have led several successful end-to-end product releases. I currently work as a Staff Product Marketing Manager at Okta, a leading identity and access management platform that empowers organizations to securely connect their people and technology.

Staff Product Marketing Manager, Auth0

Eric Wu

Scale your B2B SaaS faster with Auth0 Tenancy-as-a-Service. Automate multi-tenancy, SCIM, and SSO to close enterprise deals without the engineering overhead.

"tenancy-as-a-service"