DZone

Apache Kafka became the de facto standard for event streaming. The open-source community is huge. Various vendors added Kafka and related tooling to their offerings or provide a Kafka cloud service. This blog post uses the car analogy – from the motor engine to the self-driving car – to explore the different Kafka offerings available on the market. I also cover a few other vehicles, meaning (partly) Kafka-compatible technologies. The goal is not a feature-by-feature comparison (that would be outdated the day after the publication). Instead, the intention is to educate about the different deployment models, product strategies, and trade-offs from the available options.

Disclaimer: I work for Confluent. However, the post is not about comparing features but explaining the concepts behind the alternatives. I talk to enterprises across the globe every week. I can assure you that many people I talk to are not aware or mislead about what you read in the following sections. Hence, I hope that the following helps you to make the right decision. Either choose to run open-source Apache Kafka or one of the various commercial Kafka offerings, or even a combination of both.

Source: DZone