The document discusses 4 reasons to use a cloud-native Kafka service like Confluent Cloud instead of managing Kafka yourself. It notes that managing Kafka requires significant investment of time and resources for tasks like architecture planning, cluster sizing, software upgrades, and more. A cloud-native service handles all operational overhead automatically so you can focus on your core business. Confluent Cloud specifically offers elastic scaling, infinite data retention, global access across clouds, and integrations to make it a complete data streaming platform.

1. Why Cloud-Native Kafka Matters:
4 Reasons to Stop Managing It Yourself
Greg Murphy
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Confluent

2. Data-Driven
Operations
Real-time,
Personalized,
Customer
Experiences
New Business
Models
You know the value of data in motion

3. The Power of Kafka
80%
Fortune 100 Companies
Using Apache Kafka®
(majority are Confluent customers)
3

4. I N V E S T M E N T & T I M E
SCALE
The toll and risk of managing Kafka grows over time
● Architecture planning
● Kafka cluster sizing
● Cluster provisioning
● Build & set up source/sink connectors
● Build monitoring and reporting tools
● Maintain software patches and upgrades
● Monitor and react to security and reliability
risks
● Maintain, upgrade, and restart servers
● Monitor Kafka cluster
loading and rebalancing
● Plan and execute cluster
expansions
● Provide utilization visibility
across the organization
● Maintain cluster
performance through infra
upgrades, migrations, etc
● Manage Zookeeper
● And so much more . . .

5. Core vs. Non-Core
“Whatever is the new thing that creates
differentiation, that’s core.” Meanwhile, context
is any activity that doesn’t differentiate the
company in the eyes of the customer. “If we do
[context] brilliantly, we don’t succeed. If we do
it badly, we get in trouble.”
— Geoffrey Moore, author and management expert

6. The Move to Cloud-Native Data Systems
6
Storage
Data
Warehousing
Databases
Amazon S3 Blob
storage
Redshift
Snowflake
Google
BigTable
Self managed
hardware and
software
Fully managed
services
Data
Movement
“By 2022, 75% of all databases will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform.”
- Gartner

7. The cloud-native difference
with Confluent

8. Partially Managed
(cloud-hosted)
Manual operations
with tools and/or
support
Ease and speed of use
Low High
Other managed
services for Kafka
Confluent is the only cloud-native Kafka solution
Self-Managed
(DIY)
Development and
maintenance
without support
Fully Managed
(cloud-native)
Automated product
capabilities with no
operational overhead
Confluent Cloud

9. Copyright 2021, Confluent, Inc. All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced in any manner without the express written permission of Confluent, Inc.
The 4 Benefits of a Cloud-Native Kafka Service
Scale up instantly
to meet any
demand and scale
back down to avoid
over-provisioning
infrastructure
Elastic
Build and launch
faster with a
complete data in
motion platform
that goes way
beyond Kafka
Complete
Infinite
Store unlimited data
on Confluent to
enhance your
real-time apps and
use cases with a
broader set of data
Global
Create a consistent
data fabric
throughout your
organization by
linking clusters across
your different
environments

10. Elastic

11. Elastic Scaling in Confluent Cloud
Confluent Cloud
Milliseconds Minutes
Basic, Standard [0-100Mbps]
*Even in public clouds provider quotas for VMs, disks, security groups can be encountered causing delays. Confluent has these limits raised already.
Dedicated [Mbps - Gbps]
Select CKU from drop down in
cluster management UI and
click Apply Changes
Other Kafka Services
Days - Weeks
Determine how much capacity is needed
Procure capacity*
Configure new brokers
a. Disks b. OS c. Network d. Kafka (application)
Identify partitions on specific brokers to
rebalance & topics they are part of
For each Topic: migrate partitions
a. Increase ISR +1 b. Wait for new replica to sync
c. Failover master d. Reduce ISR -1 e. Delete old replica
Automated 1 Click

12. Elastic

13. Infinite

14. Infinite Retention
Scale up storage without
adding compute
resources by removing
storage limits on topics
to enable infinite data
retention in Kafka
Cluster
Broker 1 Broker 2 Broker 2
Topic 1
Topic 2
Topic 3
Topic 2
Topic 3
Topic 2
Topic 3
Topic 1
Topic 1
Available on AWS and Google Cloud

15. Infinite Retention
Cluster
Broker 1 Broker 2 Broker 2
Topic 1
Topic 2
Topic 3
Topic 2
Topic 3
Topic 2
Topic 3
Topic 1
Topic 1
Available on AWS and Google Cloud
● Reimagine event streaming
apps that can use both
real-time and historical events
● Faster and better informed
decision making for your
event-driven processes
● Meet regulatory compliance
requirements for data
retention

16. Infinite

17. “Confluent gives us the tools we need
to drive innovation. Before Confluent
Cloud, when we had broker outages
that required rebuilds, it could take up
to three days of developers’ time to
resolve. Now, Confluent takes care of
everything for us, so our developers
can focus on building new features
and applications.”
— Jon Vines, Software Development
Team Lead at AO.com
AO.com maintains focus
on value with Confluent

18. Global

19. 19
Deploy how and where you want
Confluent AWS
MARKETPLACE
Azure
MARKETPLACE
Google Cloud
MARKETPLACE
Start your multi-cloud
journey
Simplify procurement with easy click-though through annual commitments and draw
down against existing Enterprise Agreements in your cloud marketplace of choice
20 regions 16 regions 22 regions

20. Copyright 2021, Confluent, Inc. All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced in any manner without the express written permission of Confluent, Inc.
Global Access
● Create a consistent data
layer across clouds: easily
share data between fully
independent clusters
● Simplify your architecture:
bridge or migrate data
without needing a separate
Connect cluster
Cluster Linking (preview) requires no additional
infrastructure and fully preserves offsets
Migrate
clusters to
Confluent
Cloud
Access real-time data globally and across public and private clouds
with linked Kafka clusters that sync in real-time

21. Complete

22. Build and launch faster
with a Complete data in motion platform
Pre-built
Integrations
Data
Governance
Stream
Processing
Enterprise-Grade
Security
Instantly integrate
clusters to the most
popular data sources
and sinks within the
Kafka ecosystem
Make data backwards
compatible and
future-proof with
Schema Registry &
Validation
Launch real-time and
continuous stream
processing apps with
a lightweight SQL
syntax
Ensure data
confidentiality,
control access
management, and
monitor user activity

23. Instantly Connect Popular Data Sources & Sinks
Choose from a growing list of fully managed connectors in Cloud Confluent
Sources Sinks
Amazon
Kinesis
Azure Event
Hubs
Datagen GCP
Pub/Sub
Microsoft SQL
Server CDC
Microsoft
SQL Server
MongoDB
Atlas
MySQL CDC MySQL Oracle
Database
Postgres
CDC
Postgres Salesforce
CDC
Elasticsearch
Service
GCP
BigQuery
GCP
Dataproc
AWS
Lambda
Azure
Functions
GCP Cloud
Storage
Microsoft
SQL Server
MongoDB
Atlas
MySQL Postgres Snowflake
Visit confluent.io/hub to see all available connectors
Datadog
Metrics

24. MongoDB Atlas Source
& Sink Connectors
Build and launch real-time apps faster
with fully managed source & sink
connectors.
Now Generally Available!
Deploy with just a few clicks and
eliminate the efforts to build, test, &
maintain custom integrations
Work with data anywhere with setup
available across all major clouds
including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
Drive analysis with real-time data by
connecting Apache Kafka®
and
MongoDB

25. Manage Schema Registry
Centrally create, edit and view topic schemas,
and compare schema versions
Configure Schema Validation
Enable the feature at the topic level when
creating or editing topics
Simplify Enterprise Schema Management

26. ksqlDB provides everything you need to build
a complete, end-to-end event streaming
application entirely with SQL syntax
DB
APP
APP
DB
PULL
PUSH
CONNECTORS
STREAM
PROCESSING
STATE STORES
ksqlDB
1 2
APP
Simplify
Your Stream
Processing
Architecture

27. Protect sensitive
data in the cloud
● SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3
● ISO 27001
● PCI, HIPAA1
ready, GDPR
ready
Enterprise grade security and compliance
Secure data against
unwanted access
● Data-at-rest encryption
● Data-in-motion encryption
● Private networking
connectivity
Control access to
cluster & resources
● SAML / SSO
● RBAC & Audit Logs
● Access Control Lists (ACLs)
1
Available on Dedicated clusters only

28. How much does Kafka cost your
business?

29. The Cost-Efficient Way to Deploy Kafka
Confluent Cloud
(typical savings)
1
2
3
⬇60
%
Cloud
Infrastructure
Operational
(FTE)
Support and
other spend
Total
self-managed
Confluent
Cloud

30. Try Confluent Free
De-risk, accelerate, and save with Confluent
Request TCO Assessment
confluent.io/request-kafka-tco-assessment

31. Thank You