Apache Kafka Defined

Apache Kafka is a community distributed event streaming platform, which is capable of handling trillions of events a day.

Kafka is used for real-time streams of data, to collect big data and, or to do real time analysis.

It is used with in-memory microservices to provide durability while also being used to feed events to CEP (complex event streaming systems) and IoT/IFTTT-style automation systems.

Kafka is generally used for two broad classes of applications:

• Building real-time streaming data pipelines that reliably get data between systems or applications and;
• Building real-time streaming applications that transform or react to the streams of data

Advantages of Kafka include:

•       Low Latency: Theplatform offers low latency value.
•       High Throughput:  Kafka is able to handle more number of messages of high volume and high velocity.
•       Fault tolerance: It has an essential feature to provide resistance to node/machine failure within the cluster.
•       Durability: It offers the replication feature, which makes data or messages to persist more on the cluster over a disk, making it durable.
•       Reduces the need for multiple integrations: All the data that a producer writes go through Kafka.
•       Easily accessible: As the data gets stored in Kafka, it becomes democratized and accessible to anyone.
•       Scalability: The quality of Kafka to handle large amounts of messages simultaneously make it a scalable software product.

Companies currently using Kafka include:

•       Uber
•       Spotify
•       Slack
•       Shopify
•       Coursera

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