Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
When building multi-tenant SaaS apps, developers must design for data isolation, scalability, and performance. Azure Cosmos DB, a high-performance and AI-ready database, has new fleet management capabilities to simplify capacity management and monitoring at scale, and materialized views and global secondary indexes to deliver faster queries. Hear from Azure Cosmos DB product leaders and SaaS firm Sitecore for tips on data modeling, design patterns, and query optimizations for resilient and scalable apps.
Welcome and Introduction: The session opened with a warm welcome, setting a positive tone for the discussion on designing scalable data layers for multi-tenant applications using Azure Cosmos DB.
Session Overview: The speakers outlined the agenda, emphasizing a walkthrough of the lifecycle of building a multi-tenant application on Cosmos DB, sharing insights and lessons learned over the years.
Design Focus: The conversation initially centered on the design aspects required for multi-tenant applications, highlighting the trade-offs between isolation per tenant and cost efficiency, crucial for building scalable multi-tenant systems.
Development Insights: The discussion detailed the development process, particularly focusing on querying techniques, indexing strategies, and the importance of selecting the right partition key to optimize performance and cost.
Production Considerations: The team shared strategies for productionizing multi-tenant applications, including best practices for resiliency, such as implementing circuit breakers and bulkheads to manage the load and maintain service continuity.
Monitoring and Optimization: The session concluded with insights into monitoring and optimization techniques, stressing the importance of comprehensive logging and analytics to foresee and troubleshoot potential issues, ensuring high availability and system health.
Speakers:
Deborah Chen
Product Manager, Azure Cosmos DB
Microsoft
Deborah Chen is a Product Manager on Azure Cosmos DB. She focuses on building a great partitioning and elasticity experience to enable customers to get the best cost/performance in Cosmos DB, as well as investments to improve Cosmos DB for customers building multi-tenant apps. In her free time, she enjoys building demos to show the capabilities of Azure Cosmos DB. Previously, she worked on Visual Studio, building out new debugging and productivity features.
Andrew Liu
PM, Azure Data
Microsoft
Andrew Liu is a seasoned product manager with deep expertise in cloud databases, AI infrastructure, and developer experience. He leads initiatives at Microsoft to drive adoption of Azure Cosmos DB for generative AI and mission-critical workloads. Andrew has a track record of bridging technical depth with business impact, and he’s passionate about enabling teams to build scalable, resilient systems.
Liz Nelson
Senior Director, Product
Sitecore
Liz is the Senior Director of Product Management for Sitecore's XM Cloud, where she leads the development of Sitecore's fastest-growing product. She has a background in headless CMS, developer experience and digital content delivery, Liz focused on building modern products that serve the needs of marketers and developers alike.
#MSBuild #AzureCosmosDB #nosql
When building multi-tenant SaaS apps, developers must design for data isolation, scalability, and performance. Azure Cosmos DB, a high-performance and AI-ready database, has new fleet management capabilities to simplify capacity management and monitoring at scale, and materialized views and global secondary indexes to deliver faster queries. Hear from Azure Cosmos DB product leaders and SaaS firm Sitecore for tips on data modeling, design patterns, and query optimizations for resilient and scalable apps.
Welcome and Introduction: The session opened with a warm welcome, setting a positive tone for the discussion on designing scalable data layers for multi-tenant applications using Azure Cosmos DB.
Session Overview: The speakers outlined the agenda, emphasizing a walkthrough of the lifecycle of building a multi-tenant application on Cosmos DB, sharing insights and lessons learned over the years.
Design Focus: The conversation initially centered on the design aspects required for multi-tenant applications, highlighting the trade-offs between isolation per tenant and cost efficiency, crucial for building scalable multi-tenant systems.
Development Insights: The discussion detailed the development process, particularly focusing on querying techniques, indexing strategies, and the importance of selecting the right partition key to optimize performance and cost.
Production Considerations: The team shared strategies for productionizing multi-tenant applications, including best practices for resiliency, such as implementing circuit breakers and bulkheads to manage the load and maintain service continuity.
Monitoring and Optimization: The session concluded with insights into monitoring and optimization techniques, stressing the importance of comprehensive logging and analytics to foresee and troubleshoot potential issues, ensuring high availability and system health.
Speakers:
Deborah Chen
Product Manager, Azure Cosmos DB
Microsoft
Deborah Chen is a Product Manager on Azure Cosmos DB. She focuses on building a great partitioning and elasticity experience to enable customers to get the best cost/performance in Cosmos DB, as well as investments to improve Cosmos DB for customers building multi-tenant apps. In her free time, she enjoys building demos to show the capabilities of Azure Cosmos DB. Previously, she worked on Visual Studio, building out new debugging and productivity features.
Andrew Liu
PM, Azure Data
Microsoft
Andrew Liu is a seasoned product manager with deep expertise in cloud databases, AI infrastructure, and developer experience. He leads initiatives at Microsoft to drive adoption of Azure Cosmos DB for generative AI and mission-critical workloads. Andrew has a track record of bridging technical depth with business impact, and he’s passionate about enabling teams to build scalable, resilient systems.
Liz Nelson
Senior Director, Product
Sitecore
Liz is the Senior Director of Product Management for Sitecore's XM Cloud, where she leads the development of Sitecore's fastest-growing product. She has a background in headless CMS, developer experience and digital content delivery, Liz focused on building modern products that serve the needs of marketers and developers alike.
#MSBuild #AzureCosmosDB #nosql
