Beyond ETL: Putting Data to Work with a Zero-Copy Architecture for AI
Webinar Speaker: Donald Farmer, Research Fellow
Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Time: 9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 p.m. ET
Enterprise investment in AI and analytics keeps climbing, and leaders now expect models that mirror how the business runs day to day. For many enterprises, much of that operational reality sits inside finance, supply chain, manufacturing, and customer records that carry decades of historical detail, business definitions, and data relationships. This data is essential to creating a competitive advantage with AI.
The traditional route to analytics copied that data into separate platforms through layer after layer of ETL. But each new process stripped out business meaning, multiplied costs, and created more fragile governance across tools.
With the growth of AI, and especially autonomous agents, business insight needs a different foundation: data that stays governed at its source while analytics and AI teams read it directly. Zero-copy access to a business data fabric keeps semantics, lineage, and quality rules intact, so the same governed data feeds planning, reporting, and machine learning, with no industry-specific warehouse to rebuild or silos of data to copy.
In this webinar, TDWI research fellow Donald Farmer and key industry and product experts from Snowflake discuss how organizations can modernize analytics and make their data AI ready in an enterprise‑ready environment with built‑in governance, performance, and scale, especially for SAP systems, without migration or duplication. Using real enterprise scenarios in demand forecasting, manufacturing, and retail, they will explore how governed data products move in both directions between SAP and the analytics environment, and where zero-copy access fits against selective replication when performance matters. Key takeaways:
- Why data silos and fragmented platforms stall AI and agent initiatives
- How zero-copy access keeps data governed while giving analytics and AI teams direct, real-time access
- What separates a business data fabric from traditional ETL integration
- How manufacturing and consumer-goods teams apply governed data to real business priorities
- How enriched insights return to planning and operational workflows as governed data products
Guest Speakers
Saptarshi Mukherjee
Senior Director of Product Management
Snowflake
Saptarshi (Sap) Mukherjee leads Data Ingestion Product Management at Snowflake, driving innovations in SaaS, streaming, data engineering and database integrations. With 20+ years in AI and analytics, Sap previously held leadership roles at Google and Microsoft. He holds a master’s in information management and a CS engineering degree.
Martin Gutberlet
Industry Principal, Manufacturing
Snowflake
Martin Gutberlet comes to Snowflake with over 28 years of diverse experience including senior IT and Digital leadership roles in manufacturing, chemical industry, food and telecoms. He has a strong record in digital transformation, implementing Industry 4.0, improving operations and organizational design. He started his career at Ericsson as Product Manager followed by becoming Partner at KPMG Consulting supporting companies with large IT initiatives. Then Martin joined Gartner as VP of Research and later he got promoted to RVP managing Germany, Austria & Switzerland. After almost 15 years he decided to change into the industry performing roles such as Head of Digital at DMG Mori, CDO at Mondi and most recently CIO at tesa. Martin holds a Master of Electrical Engineering from the University of Dortmund, is a certified international program manager by INSEAD and holds a patent for predictive maintenance.
Dirk Pluschke
Sr. Manager, Solution Engineering
Snowflake
Dirk Pluschke currently heads the Solution Engineering team dedicated to strategic Life Sciences customers in the US East at Snowflake. He began his career at SAP in Wallorf, Germany, starting as an SAP consultant within SAP IT to manage internal SAP systems. He later transitioned into a field position at SAP ultimately as a Principal Solution Engineer guiding customers in their adopting of SAP HANA and other Data & Technology solutions as well as defining S/4HANA journeys. Following his 19-year tenure at SAP, Dirk transitioned to Snowflake in 2020, where he specializes in addressing the data & analytics requirements of Life Sciences clients.
Donald Farmer