Confluent Cloud broadens Apache Kafka's reach

The industry’s only fully managed Apache Kafka® service is now available on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure marketplaces ensuring the fastest path to getting started with event streaming.

  • 3 years ago Posted in
Confluent, Inc., the event streaming pioneer, has announced the Project Metamorphosis Everywhere release, which brings the simplicity and flexibility of cloud computing to event streaming. As part of the release, Confluent Cloud is now available on the AWS marketplace, making it the only fully managed Apache Kafka service accessible across the three major cloud marketplaces, including Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. With integrated billing and direct access to Confluent Cloud through these marketplaces, Confluent has removed the technical burdens and complicated procurement process of getting started with Kafka. Now, harnessing the power of event streaming has never been easier. Organisations can quickly build next-generation event streaming applications without the hassle of managing event streaming infrastructure or worrying about what cloud it's on. 

“The paradigm shift toward event streaming comes at a time when operating in the cloud is a standard for most modern businesses,” said Jay Kreps, co-founder and CEO, Confluent. “These two transformational technologies were historically hard to bridge. Through Project Metamorphosis, we’re removing major challenges to deploying Kafka in the cloud, and with direct access to Confluent Cloud through the world’s most popular cloud marketplaces it’s never been easier to get started.”  

 

Many organisations are turning to cloud to improve scalability, elasticity, and to be more cost-effective. However, because of the point-to-point custom code work needed to integrate a complex distributed system like Kafka, a significant amount of time is required to build and maintain event streaming in cloud environments. In addition, navigating internal procurement processes for new technologies can be a long, cumbersome process that slows down application development.  

 

Confluent’s Everywhere release solves these hurdles and ensures the fastest path to building and scaling event streaming applications. Now, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud customers can bypass the typical procurement process by reallocating existing enterprise commits from these cloud vendors toward an annual Confluent Cloud commit contract or monthly pay-as-you-go account. Confluent is also expanding the portfolio of supported regions on each cloud vendor to ensure businesses have high availability computing at each locale. With Confluent’s Everywhere launch, it’s never been easier to get started with event streaming. 

 

Momentum with Strategic Cloud Partners  

AWS  

 

Confluent Cloud has always been available on AWS, but with new accessibility through the AWS marketplace, the process of deploying fully managed Kafka in the cloud is radically simplified. There’s now one unified billing model and a single place to access managed services like Confluent Cloud connectors for Amazon S3 Sink, Amazon Kinesis Source, and Amazon Redshift Sink (preview). The development experience has become frictionless with all these capabilities within a single service. 

 

“Confluent Cloud on AWS gives BAADER the ability to control sharing, replication, and permissions so it can act as a single source of truth across the food value chain,” said Stefan Frehse, digitalisation software architect, BAADER. “By making Confluent’s event streaming platform the single source of truth, we are changing the corporate culture through event streaming. Teams may have different perspectives on the insights uncovered in our events, but they all recognise that these events are the cornerstone of our operations.” 

 

Azure 

 

Confluent Cloud is also available through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace with the same unified billing model. Developers can leverage their existing billing service on Azure for Confluent Cloud and its fully managed connectors to Azure Blob Storage Sink, Azure Event Hubs Source, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Sink (preview), and Microsoft SQL Server Source (preview).  

 

“To stay at the forefront of the data evolution that’s driving transformation in the construction industry, we need to be as agile as possible,” said Greg Gentling, director, enterprise architecture, Viewpoint. “That's why we partner with Confluent and Microsoft Azure. Confluent Cloud is the most simple, cost-effective way to adopt and scale Apache Kafka. And as we build our next-generation applications, event streaming has made it easy to connect the historical data sitting in legacy applications with our new architectures – in hours we can accomplish what would have taken teams of people countless days.”  

 

Google Cloud  

 

At the start of this year, Confluent Cloud became available on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) marketplace. Since then, Confluent and Google Cloud have closely partnered to build fully managed connectors to Google’s cloud ecosystem, including Google Cloud Storage Sink, Google BigQuery Sink, Google Spanner Sink (preview), and Google Dataproc Sink (preview). Confluent was also named the Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year for Smart Analytics, the second year in a row Confluent was recognised for this award.  

 

“Kafka provides the backbone for how many of our systems communicate with each other reliably and our use of Kafka Streams gives our engineers the flexibility to think and design systems at a higher level,” said Ben Mabey, chief technology officer, Recursion. “And Confluent Cloud on Google Cloud makes all of that so much easier because we don’t have to manage ZooKeeper or worry about operational aspects of our Kafka deployment. Confluent Cloud is crucial to the cadence and robust workflow we have established.”

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