What is Apache Kafka?

Apache Kafka® is a distributed, fault-tolerant platform that enables real-time data processing. It uses a publish-subscribe messaging model, where producers (data sources) publish data to topics, and consumers (data sinks) subscribe to these topics to receive the data stream. Kafka is known for its excellent performance, low latency, fault tolerance, and high throughput which make it a popular choice for a wide range of applications.

Apache Kafka is a distributed streaming platform designed to handle high-volume, real-time data streams. It enables developers to build scalable and reliable applications that process and respond to data as it flows.

Kafka stores data in a persistent, fault-tolerant manner, making it suitable for various use cases, including:

• Message Broker: Replacing traditional message brokers for high-throughput, low-latency messaging.
• Log Aggregation: Centralizing and storing logs from various sources.
• Stream Processing: Processing data streams in real-time using frameworks like Apache Flink, Apache Spark Streaming, or Cogility’s Cogynt.

Apache Kafka often serves as the backbone of real-time data pipelines, where data is ingested, processed, and stored in a data warehouse or data lake for further analysis. This architectural pattern is sometimes referred to as the Kappa Architecture.

What Companies Use Apache Kafka?

Apache Kafka is used by organizations in every industry - from software, financial services, healthcare, to government and transportation. Kafka is used by thousands of companies including over 80% of the Fortune 100. Among these are Box, Barclays, Target, Cloudflare, Intuit, and more.