The Journey: OSS Kafka MSK Confluent
Andy Steinmann of MarketAxess walks through how his team learned that “managed” Apache Kafka wasn’t really managed—and why Confluent Cloud was different.
Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing
Modern Software Development For Today's Systems & Applications
Confluent Cloud Is Your Life (K)Raft Away From Hosted Apache Kafka
Streaming your data with Apache Kafka, at its core, involves moving data from one point to another in real time, much like a river flows from its source to its destination. However, beneath this seemingly straightforward goal lies significant complexity and hidden costs. The multitude of available deployment options, hosted and managed Kafka services, and design choices make it difficult to navigate the data streaming landscape.
Why Expertise Matters in Data Streaming
Andy Steinmann of MarketAxess shares how access to Apache Kafka experts—not just software—became the turning point in MarketAxess’ shift to Confluent Cloud.
How to Build a Custom Kafka Connector - A Comprehensive Guide
In today’s data-driven world, seamless data integration is crucial to ensuring the smooth operation of modern systems. With the growing complexity of distributed data platforms, businesses and developers are seeking efficient ways to move, process, and transform data. Apache Kafka has become the de facto standard for real-time data streaming, and Kafka Connect plays a key role in facilitating the integration of Kafka with various data sources and sinks.
Confluent Connect: FY'25 Launch Highlights - Unlocking Data & Powering AI Pipelines
Dive into the biggest breakthroughs for the Confluent Connect ecosystem in 2025! This year, we made moving data easier than ever, from modernizing legacy systems with the Oracle XStream CDC Premium Connector to empowering developers with Custom SMTs and Custom Connectors on Google Cloud. Discover the over 10 new connectors we launched, including Snowflake Source, Azure Cosmos DB v2, and Neo4j Sink, plus the release of Confluent Hub 2.0. Learn how Confluent Cloud connectors are breaking down silos and building bridges for your next-gen AI and data modernization projects.
Why Managing Your Apache Kafka Schemas Is Costing You More Than You Think
For developers building event-driven systems, schemas are essential for using schemas to define data contracts between producers and consumers in Apache Kafka, ensuring every message can be correctly interpreted. But when schema management is handled manually or through do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions, organizations face escalating expenses that compound as their deployments scale.
Confluent Recognized in 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools
We are pleased to announce that Confluent has been recognized again as a Challenger in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. We believe this recognition validates the scale and reliability of our platform, acknowledging our "Ability to Execute" in powering the mission-critical data flows of the world's largest organizations.
Why Cluster Rebalancing Counts More Than You Think in Your Apache Kafka Costs
Cluster rebalancing is the redistribution of partitions across Kafka brokers to balance workload and performance. While this task is a necessary and frequent part of routine Apache Kafka operations, its true impact on infrastructure stability, resource consumption, and cloud expenditures is often underestimated.
Apache Kafka Monitoring Is Costing You More Than You Think
For organizations that rely on Apache Kafka, monitoring capabilities aren’t just a "nice-to-have"—it's a fundamental requirement for reliable performance in production and business continuity. However, the true cost of monitoring Kafka is often misunderstood. It’s not a single line item on a bill but a collection of hidden expenses that silently drain your engineering budget and inflate your total cost of ownership (TCO).
Cost to Build a Data Streaming Platform: TCO, Risks, and Alternatives
For many organizations, the decision to adopt a data streaming architecture is a strategic imperative—critical for driving everything from instant personalization to global fraud detection. The question is no longer if they should stream, but how. This leads directly to a critical, often underestimated, financial calculation: the cost to build a data streaming platform (DSP) in-house versus the cost of subscribing to a managed service. Let’s explore key considerations in the "build vs.