Name: Trends in Retail: Headless Commerce, Metaverse, Slow is the New Down… oh my!
Start: 2022-12-29T15:52:00Z
End: 2022-12-29T15:52:33.000Z
Location: BrightTALK

Silk helps organizations get the most out of their mission-critical databases in the cloud with up to 10x faster performance and 40%+ lower cloud costs. Our webinars explore how to optimize cost and performance for workloads like Oracle and SQL Server, overcome cloud storage limitations, and enable new potential for AI and innovation. Tune in to hear from cloud architects, database experts, and industry leaders who are transforming their environments with Silk.

Microsoft Ignite 2025 is set to deliver some major announcements around AI, data, and performance and we’re ready to break them down.

Join us after Ignite as Silk’s Stig Panduro and Ori Weizman share our Top 5 Takeaways and what they mean for enterprises building the next generation of cloud-powered innovation on Azure.

Top 5 Takeaways from Microsoft Ignite 2025

Running mission-critical databases in Microsoft Azure? The right storage choice can mean the difference between peak performance and costly bottlenecks. 

In this webinar, we’ll walk through the Azure storage options best suited for high-performance database workloads. You’ll learn how to align storage with your performance and cost goals—and how the right approach not only supports today’s databases but also gets you ready for AI-driven analytics and applications that need fast access to massive data sets. 

By the end, you’ll have a clear picture of which Azure storage options deliver the best results now and how to prepare your environment for the AI demands ahead.

Choosing the Right Azure Storage for High-Performance Databases

Cloud database costs aren’t just high — they’re hiding in places easy to overlook. Unused capacity. Overprovisioned instances. Hidden storage fees. Inefficient backups. Full clones of data. Premium services you don’t actually need. For FinOps teams, these silent budget drains add up fast, turning your monthly cloud bill into a runaway train.

In this webinar, we will show you exactly where cloud database costs are hiding and how to recover them without sacrificing performance. We’ll explain why a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis is the key to making cloud database decisions, and how to use our simple cost calculator to put hard numbers to your savings potential.

The FinOps Survival Guide for Cloud Databases

Moving mission-critical data to the cloud offers many benefits but also brings real challenges. Organizations often struggle with unexpected costs, unpredictable performance, and providing fast, reliable access to data. These challenges can slow down innovation and make it harder to support emerging AI and analytics initiatives, which rely heavily on real-time access to your data. 

In this webinar, Silk and Atos will share our top 5 practical insights and strategies to help you optimize and future-proof your mission-critical data in the cloud for cost, performance, and AI-readiness.

5 Cloud Strategies for Mission-Critical Data in the Age of AI

How to De-Escalate Risk When Enabling AI to Access Relational Systems (Oracle, SQL, Postgres)

GenAI workloads—like chatbots, fraud detection, and RAG—demand low-latency access to production-grade data in your relational systems. But most enterprise infrastructures weren’t built for that kind of load or responsiveness. As AI agents begin to interact directly with your systems of record, new challenges emerge: unpredictable spikes, degraded performance, governance blind spots, and runaway cloud costs. 

In this webinar, we will explore the technical impact of AI on production systems and the critical limitations of traditional data pipelines. We'll walk through what breaks when AI meets legacy storage, and outline key architectural principles for enabling real-time, scalable, and resilient AI operations with your relational systems.

You’ll learn: 
- Why batch pipelines and data warehouses aren’t sufficient for real-time AI 
- How production databases are becoming the default source of truth, and the risks that come with it 
- The architectural shifts needed to deliver low-latency AI without compromising system performance or data integrity 
- How technologies like instant zero-footprint snapshots and decoupled data access can help

AI Runs on Real-Time Data — But Is Your Infrastructure Ready?

Looking for cloud infrastructure that doesn’t compromise between speed and cost? Meet Silk—the cloud storage platform purpose-built to deliver 10x faster performance at 40%+ lower cost than typical cloud storage. 
 
In this product-focused webinar, Silk experts David Berliner and Ori Weizman break down exactly how Silk's architecture delivers industry-leading performance and efficiency for even the most demanding workloads like Oracle, SQL Server, and mission-critical applications. You’ll see real-world benchmarks, hear customer results, and learn why enterprises choose Silk to accelerate their cloud transformation.  
 
What You’ll Learn: 
- How Silk’s architecture enables the fastest performance in the cloud 
- Real examples of customers getting this performance while still reducing cloud costs by 40% or more
- How Silk enables AI-ready cloud storage 
- What to consider when comparing cloud storage solutions and how Silk stacks up 
 
Ideal for: Cloud architects, infrastructure leaders, and IT decision-makers evaluating storage options for performance-critical workloads.

How Silk Delivers 10x Performance at 40%+ Lower Cloud Cost

Inspired by Sentara Health and TriZetto 

Cloud data strategies in healthcare are evolving fast — and leading organizations like Sentara Health are already setting the pace. Join this practical, insight-packed webinar to discover four powerful cloud data practices that are transforming how healthcare IT teams operate, scale, and innovate. 

We’ll explore real-world tactics inspired by Sentara Health’s modernization of their TriZetto QNXT environment — including how they’re accelerating real-time data access, cutting cloud costs, and enabling secure, production-grade environments for Dev, Test, and AI. 

You’ll learn how to: 
- Employ near-instant data refreshes to accelerate development and testing -- for example, to facilitate integrations, improve quality of claims submissions to Medicare or Medicaid, or improve efficiency of encounters 
- Scale data access instantly using zero-footprint snapshots 
- Share production data securely through data masking, ensuring HIPAA compliance 
- Power Dev/Test/AI workloads directly from production without performance or capacity trade-offs 

If your organization is running QNXT, or looking to modernize its healthcare data strategy, this session will give you the blueprint.

4 Cloud Data Practices Every Healthcare Organization Should Be Using

Are you running big relational databases (RDBMS) in the cloud and want to maximize performance and costs? Thinking about how to prepare your data for AI? This session is for you! 

Join Silk and Microsoft for a discussion about how leading organizations are optimizing their relational databases in the cloud for both performance and price. In this session, you'll hear the story of a joint customer who required high-performance RDBMS on Microsoft Azure—and how Silk and Microsoft partnered to deliver. In fact, this collaboration helped influence the development of Microsoft’s latest Laos v4 architecture, bringing performance gains that benefit all customers.

From there, we’ll show you how to reduce the costs of running your mission-critical databases, create zero-footprint copies for AI and analytics use, and create budget to invest in next-gen initiatives.

In this session, you will learn about how to:
• Optimize cloud performance and cost for RDBMS workloads on Azure
• Prep relational data for AI in near real time—without slowing down production
• Turn cloud savings into fuel for innovation and AI-driven projects

Check out the new Azure L-series v4 VMs, now GA! 
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azurecompute/announcing-the-general-availability-of-azure-laosv4-lasv4-and-lsv4-storage-optim/4422481

Cost-Performance with a Side of AI: Cut RDBMS Costs, Prep Data for AI, and Fund Your Next-Gen Projects

Healthcare organizations are at a pivotal moment in their cloud journey, driven by the need to reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, and embrace AI-powered innovation. Join us for a dynamic webinar featuring Scott Mayo, COO at OptaFi, and David Berliner, Senior Director of Product at Silk. 

Through real-world customer examples, they’ll demonstrate how to unlock savings, optimize key systems like EHRs and claims processing, and leverage advanced health analytics for a competitive edge. Whether you’re a provider or payer, this session will equip you with practical strategies for success in the cloud.
  
Key takeaways for attendees: 
- Proven ways to cut costs and improve performance in healthcare cloud systems. 
- How to maximize value from EHRs, claims processing, and health analytics. 
- Strategies for future-proofing cloud adoption with AI and data protection and real-world insights.

Inside the Cloud Journeys of Healthcare Providers and Payers: What’s Working Now

Join Tom O'Neill, VP of Product at Silk, and Tanel Poder, a renowned database consultant, as they delve into the intersection of AI and relational databases. This webinar provides an overview of Tanel’s extensive testing of vector extensions and AI capabilities in databases, including benchmarking tools and practical applications. Gain insights into his findings on performance optimization, real-world use cases, and the evolving role of AI in database innovation. For a deeper dive into the specifics of his testing, explore Tanel’s detailed series of blog posts.

Key Takeaways:

- Overview of Vector Extensions Testing: Learn about Tanel's approach to testing vector extensions and AI capabilities in relational databases.
- Real-World Applications of Testing Results: Discover how Tanel's benchmarks reveal practical uses for AI in databases, such as personalized recommendations and fraud detection.
- Deeper Insights Available: Find out how to access Tanel’s blog series for a comprehensive look at his testing methodologies and detailed results.

Inside the Lab: Testing AI-Powered Vector Extensions in Databases

Discover how leading organizations are leveraging cutting-edge AI technologies to revolutionize their operations. In this engaging roundtable discussion, hear directly from Silk customers Franciscan Health, PTC, and Sentara Healthcare as they share their AI adoption journeys and how Silk’s software-defined cloud storage has empowered them to unlock the full potential of their data. The webinar will also feature a keynote from Eduardo Kassner, Chief Data and AI Officer at Microsoft, offering insights into the latest trends in AI and data innovation.

Attendees will:

- Learn how top organizations are implementing AI to drive innovation and efficiency.
- Understand the role of Silk’s high-performance database platform in enabling seamless AI adoption.
- Gain expert insights into future AI trends

AI Transformation Unleashed: Stories from Silk Customers and Microsoft Experts

In today’s cloud environments, it’s not unusual for 20 copies of production data to be scattered across an organization’s ecosystem, serving diverse needs like development, testing, backups, analytics, and AI. However, managing this data efficiently while keeping costs and storage needs in check can be challenging. 

Join us for an informative webinar where we’ll dive deep into effective strategies for gaining control over your cloud data. We’ll explore the key differences between data management in the cloud versus traditional on-prem environments and discuss best practices for keeping your cloud footprint to a minimum. You'll learn how to optimize your cloud data for various business needs—without sacrificing performance or security. 

We’ll also showcase how Silk cloud storage simplifies data workflows, making it easier to manage multiple data copies efficiently while driving down costs. This session will cover: 

- Common use cases for data copies in cloud environments 
- Strategies to reduce your overall cloud data footprint 
- Tips for maintaining data readiness across different workflows 
- How Silk cloud storage enhances data management and optimization 

Whether you’re a cloud architect, IT leader, DBA, or data engineer, this webinar will provide valuable insights and practical steps to make your cloud data management more efficient and cost-effective. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to streamline your cloud operations!

Mastering the Cost of Data in the Cloud: Strategies for Reducing Your Cloud Footprint

Discover how renowned database consultant Tanel Poder achieved an astonishing 20 GB/s on a single cloud VM using the Silk Platform. Join Silk’s VP of Product, Tom O’Neill, and Tanel himself as they break down the performance test, the impressive results, and how you can achieve similar outcomes for your workloads.

This webinar is available on demand—watch anytime to unlock the full potential of your cloud environment!

How I Achieved 20 GB/s of Throughput on a Single Cloud VM

Are you aiming to design, implement, manage, and optimize a top-tier storage solution in the cloud, only to find it’s more complex and costly than expected? You’re not alone.  
  
Join us for a webinar where we’ll highlight the top 5 indicators that your cloud storage is non optimal— and how to optimize.  
  
In this session, we’ll dissect the root causes of:  
  
• Poor storage performance affecting UX 
• Excessive batch jobs and backup times 
• Escalating cloud storage expenses  
• Frequent drive outages (unplanned and/or planned maintenance) 
• Inefficient duplication of production data for Dev, Test, Analytics, and AI use cases 
   
This webinar is helpful for teams that manage or rely on cloud storage such as cloud architects, IT managers, and their teams.

Top 5 Cloud Database Storage Struggles: How to Recognize and Resolve Them

According to findings from TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), 54% of organizations have had to switch back to on-premises after an initial cloud migration.

Cloud repatriation, or the forced move of applications and environments from the cloud back into the on-premises data center, represents a disaster that many organizations would rather avoid.

To help organizations manage their cloud resources more effectively and save themselves from cloud repatriation, ESG and Silk have partnered together to produce this BrightTALK Custom Talk webinar.

Tune in to the full discussion to learn strategies you can implement to prevent cloud repatriation.

Trends in Cloud Repatriation with Silk and ESG

Technology is an enabler of change in the insurance industry, leading to more personalized customer experiences and the ability for carriers to innovate and get more value out of customer and third-party data. And it doesn’t take entirely new applications or datasets: you can use the technology investments you have already made! 

In this webinar, we will talk about how insurance carriers can do more with the technology and data they have by leveraging the cloud to enable data insights and drive better outcomes.  

During this discussion, we will talk about: 
- What’s driving change in the insurance industry 
- How insurance carriers are approaching innovation and digital transformation 
- The benefits and capabilities of the cloud for getting more value out of the data you have to gain better insights and enable AI 
- A technical example of making application data available in the cloud now

Insurance Industry Trends: Using the Cloud to Maximize Value from Your Data

Keeping data secure in the cloud is critical, especially in highly regulated industries like healthcare, with HIPAA and privacy regulations. In this webinar, we will talk about how to use database snapshots and data masking to securely bring data to development environments. We will use an example case study from Sentara Healthcare. 

We will cover:
• The current challenges in securing patient data
• The definition and importance of data masking 
• How to implement data masking in the development lifecycle
• Tools and technologies for effective data masking
• Future trends in data security and masking

Delivering and Masking Critical Patient Data for the Full Development Lifecycle

First, the "easy" workloads moved to the cloud. Customers are now moving to mission-critical workloads that need more performance, resilience, protection, and cost efficiencies. This webinar will discuss optimizing mission-critical workloads with Silk and Rubrik in your tech stack. 

With Silk sitting between your databases and the underlying cloud storage infrastructure, your applications get up to 10x better performance in the cloud. Silk adds additional layers of resiliency across availability zones, regions, and even clouds to avoid outages and downtime proactively. 

With Rubrik, your data is not just secured, but fortified. It ensures you are fully prepared to bounce back from a cyber attack, de-risking your cloud migration. Rest easy, knowing your data is protected 24x7 with AI-powered cyber resilience. 

Attendees will learn best practices for cloud performance and security from two leading tech vendors.

Drive Performance and Cost Optimization in the Cloud with Silk & Rubrik

What is all of this buzz about “Headless Commerce” and what does a retailer’s IT team need to know?

Ori Weizman, Senior Solutions Architect at Silk, and Keith Lyon, Senior Solutions Engineer at Blue Triangle, define Headless Commerce and discuss how retailers are delivering content and products across channels to reach customers where they are.

Watch this webinar to learn:
What is Headless Commerce
The architecture of Headless Commerce
Increasing speed to innovation with Headless Commerce
Future-proofing the data layer for increased demand

Trends in Retail: Headless Commerce, Metaverse, Slow is the New Down… oh my!

Retail

Ecommerce

Headless Commerce

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Trends in Retail: Headless Commerce, Metaverse, Slow is the New Down… oh my!

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